
CONFESSORS 



LIBRAR V OF CONGRESS, 
lelf i ®G 



UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 






MEMOIRS 



IRISH MARTYRS 



.A* 



LIVES 



OF THE 



IRISH MARTY.KS 




AND 



CONFESSORS. 

BY 

MYLES O'REILLY, B.A., LL. D. 

WITH ADDITIONS, INCLUDING A 

HISTORY OF THE PENAL LAWS 



BY 



REV. RICHARD BRENNAN, A.M. 



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NEW YORK: 

James Sheehy, Publisher, 33 Barclay St. 

BALTIMORE:, 74 W. Fayette St. WASHINGTON: 613 7TH St. 
BOSTON: 47 Hanover St. 

~T8787 



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Copyright. 

1878. 

By James Sheeht. 



PREFACE TO THE NEW YORK EDITION. 



It is almost needless to state that, for the various additions made 
to the New York edition of Myles O'Reilly's "Irish Martyrs and 
Confessors/' that talented author and gallant defender of Pius the 
Ninth is not responsible. Impressed with the importance of 
making still further known, if possible, the lives of our saintly 
forefathers in the faith, I have taken the liberty of adding some 
biographical sketches not to be found in the author's valuable 
collection. Among those added, will be found the lives, labors and 
sufferings of several heroic men, who, though they did not shed 
their blood for the faith, yet, by reason of their lifelong exile in 
foreign lands, well deserve the title of Confessors. These last have 
been selected. from various sources, chiefly from the "Irish Eccle- 
siastical Record." 

As a further evidence that the cruelties practised upon Irish 
Catholics were in accordance with the laws of Great Britain, I have 
also added a very complete collection of the Penal Laws, compiled 
from ParnelPs impartial Histoiy of those legislative enactments 
against the liberties and rights of our ancestors, dating from the 
Treaty of Limerick to the Reign of George III. 

Although the Church has not formally canonized these Con- 
fessors and Martyrs, we have every reasonable hope that they have 
long ago secured the rest and happiness of heaven. Let us re- 
member that we are closely related to those elect of heaven, that 
they are bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh ; that we and 
they are members of the one great Church of God, which reaches 
from the recesses of purgatory to the surface of the earth, and 
extends aloft to the highest vaults of heaven. 

R. B. 



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PREFACE 



The practice of preserving the records of the lives of great 
men, which a pagan historian declared no age, however dull, 
had ever neglected, comes to the Christian recommended by a 
deeper interest and a more pregnant use. The pagan could 
recommend the family and friends of the great departed only to 
turn from weak regrets to admiring contemplation, and suggest 
a timid hope that the object of their affection might continue to 
exist in another sphere.* 

Christians are told to remember that " we have a great cloud 
of witnesses over our head," and are called on, " laying aside 
every weight of sin which surrounds us, to run by patience to the 
fight proposed, strengthened by the example of the saints," 
and are reminded that "the just seem to the eyes of the foolish 
to die, but indeed are in peace." Hence, from the first ages of 
Christianity, it was looked upon as a sacred duty to preserve the 
memory of the lives and deaths of those who had served Christ, 
and who " had been deemed worthy to suffer for his name " — 
the memory of their deaths even more than that of their lives, 
because, while death to the pagan was the final end, (the limit 
to the labors and successes of great men,) to the Christian it was 
the very instrument of victor}'- — the moment of triumph : to the 
former, it was the termination of existence ; to the latter, it was 
the commencement of the real life : for the former, the cause fell 
with its defender ; for the latter, the triumph of the truth was 
secured by the death of its martyr. 

* Tacitus, Agricela. 



6 Preface. 

In no country was this practice of preserving the memorials 
of the saints more carefully observed than in Ireland. Our 
earliest and most authentic records since the days of St. Patrick 
are the lives of our saints ; and from Jocelyn to Colgan to re- 
cord their deeds was a labor of love. It was a remarkable fact 
that, in all these collections, up to the sixteenth century one class 
of saints found no representatives. The Church of Ireland had 
produced a " glorious choir of apostles " who bore the good tid- 
ings to many a distant land ; the " number of her prophets who 
uttered praise " was not small ; but she numbered in her calen- 
dar no representative of "the white-robed army of martyrs." 
By a singular prerogative her conversion had not cost the life 
of a single one of her teachers, and it seemed probable that, 
were she left to herself, no blood of her children, shed for the 
faith, would ever stain her soil. But the litany of her saints 
was to be completed, and he who was the " Master of her 
apostles," the "Teacher of her evangelists," the "Purity of her 
virgins," was also to be the " Light of her confessors" and the 
" Strength of her martyrs ;" and the church, whose foundations 
had been laid in peace, was to see her persecution-shaken walls 
cemented and rebuilt with the blood of her martyrs. 

The sixteenth century saw in Ireland the commencement of a 
persecution which, gradually increasing in intensity, culminated 
in the middle of the seventeenth in what was probably the most 
exterminating attack ever endured by a Christian church. The 
fanatical followers of Mohammed, in the seventh century, propa- 
gated their faith by the sword ; but the hordes of Cromwell aban- 
doned the attempt to make the Irish converts, and turned all their 
energies to blotting out Catholicity in Ireland by the destruction 
of the Irish race : the Irish were recognized as ineradicably 
Catholic, and were slain or banished to wildernesses where it 
was believed they must become extinct. While this persecution 
was one mainly and essentially of Catholicity,* it was embittered 
and prolonged by every other element which could exacerbate 
and increase its ferocity ; the differences of race, of conquest, of 

* English and Scotch Catholics, settled in the north of Ireland, were as ruthlessly expelled 
in 1650 as those of Irish descent. See Curry's Memoirs, referred to in note on next page. 



Preface. 7 

government, all added their elements of bitterness to intensify 
and prolong the strife. 

England had conquered Ireland, but never absorbed its iden- 
tity in her own ; and although she nominally ruled it, her rule up 
to 1600 was far from being consolidated. England became 
Protestant, while Ireland remained Catholic ; and hence the 
persecution of Catholicity in Ireland was not only the persecu- 
tion of the believers in one faith by the adherents of another ; it 
was also (as was the case in the Netherlands) the persecution of 
the conquered by the conquering race, of the old government by 
the new, of the possessors of the land of the country by those 
who sought to confiscate it for their own advantage. How in- 
finitely this has tended, for three hundred years, to prevent all 
impartial and good government in Ireland is patent to all. One 
incidental good, however, resulted from it : the fire of persecution 
surely but slowly fused into a common nationality all Irish Catho- 
lics of the various races which had so long remained separated. 
Norman and Celt, Palesman and " mere Irish," forgot their dif- 
ferences in their common Catholicity ; the laws which had sought 
to exclude men of Irish descent from certain posts in the church 
became obsolete when the honors of the church were the passport 
to martyrdom ; and so also the dislike of the Irish outside the 
pale to seeing bishops of English descent appointed to sees in 
their country gradually faded away before the heat of a common 
persecution. Dr. MacMahon, a pure Irishman, became Arch- 
bishop of Dublin, a see which had been occupied uninterruptedly 
by Englishmen since the time of St. Laurence O'Toole ; the see of 
Tuam was filled by Archbishops Bodkin and Skerritt; and the 
sainted Oliver Plunket, the "Palesman," was welcomed enthusias- 
tically by the Irish of Armagh. Out of the furnace of persecution 
there arose a new nationality for Ireland, composed of Irish Catho- 
lics ; whether of Irish, of English, or of Scotch descent,* it has 
continued to our day, and, we may hope, will endure to the end. 

* If my readers will glance down the list of names of those whose memorials are here given, 
they will see, mingled with such purely Celtic names as O'Neill, O'Conor, O'Reilly, O'Brien, 
those of Norman and English race, as De Burgo, Nugent, Bathe, Barry ; as Archer, English, 
Russell. Slingsby, Stapleton, Prendergast. Curry {Civil Wars, Appendix, p. 623) gives in- 
stances of Catholics of English and Scotch birth, resident in Ireland, slain for their religion. 



8 Preface. 

And it is a nationality of which we may well be proud, and which 
may console us for the sad deficiencies of our secular history. 

The natural development of political society in Ireland was 
arrested at the end of the twelfth century by the English inva- 
sion, ere the country had been consolidated under one govern- 
ment,* and for some four hundred years the English did not 
succeed in reducing the whole island under one rule. Thus, since 
1 200, Ireland, as a whole, has never had a national government f 
or national life ; and, since 1600, even the local Irish governments, 
or rules of the great chiefs, have disappeared. Thus we may 
say that, since 1200, we have no great consecutive national politi- 
cal history or national government, to the gradual development 
of which we can look back with pride and content ; but, on 
the other hand, we can trace with unalloyed satisfaction the his- 
tory of our church alike in tempest and in calm — her struggles 
in the dark and stormy ages of persecution, and her renewed 
youth and vigor in the serener atmosphere of our own days. 
Hence it is, I confess, that the history of religion in Ireland 
has always had peculiar charms for me ; and although I have 
ever felt the deepest interest in the gallant but gradually less 
and less successful struggles for independence of my race, I 
have dwelt with still deeper interest on the religious history of 
the same race — a history of progress and development alike in 
prosperity and in adversity ; a history which links the past with 
the present and the future : a past to which we can revert with 
well : grounded pride ; a present in which we recognize with grati- 
tude the fruit of the struggles and sufferings of our forefathers, 
whose example we are called on to imitate ; a future to which we 
may look forward with humble but well-grounded hope. 

To others appertains the nobler task of writing the general 
ecclesiastical history of Ireland ; and if we have not yet had a 
second Lanigan to continue the history of our church from the 
twelfth century, we are daily receiving valuable additions to our 



* The political state of Ireland in 1172 was analogous to that of England under the Hep« 
tarchy, and of France before Charlemagne. 

t Unless we except the brief rule of the Confederation of Kilkenny, from 1641 to 1647, or 
from 178S to 1800, when Ireland was ruled by an oligarchy, while the Catholics, the great 
majority of the people, were outside the pale of the constitution. 



Preface. 9 

historical knowledge of separate portions of it from the pens of 
scholars like Dr. Renehan, and his able editor Dr. McCarthy, Dr. 
Moran, and others. I have undertaken the lesser work of collect- 
ing the biographies of those martyrs and confessors the tale of 
whose sufferings makes up so large a portion of the church history 
of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. It may, 
indeed, appear strange that there has not hitherto been any 
complete collection of this sort. Ireland is a country where the 
habit of preserving local histories and biographies has flourished 
since before the Christian era, and from the days of St. Patrick her 
hagiographers collected the lives of her saints as carefully as her 
bards and genealogists collected the descents and the battles of 
her warriors. But it is a singular proof how nearly the devastation 
of the Cromwellian persecution annihilated the life of the Irish 
race that for nearly one hundred years hardly an effort was made 
to preserve a record of the sufferings of her sons. This is not 
the case with regard to the earlier and less sweeping persecu- 
tions under Henry VIII., Elizabeth, and James. Then the 
custom which had been practised by the early Christians under 
the pagan emperors of recording the sufferings of the martyrs 
was imitated by the Irish, and catalogues and biographies were 
carefully collected by those who escaped in Ireland, or who 
lived in the Irish colleges abroad. Numbers of these have been 
lost, but we still have several, such as the Processus Mar- 
tyi'ialis of Doctor Roothe, published in 16 19 ; Mooney's treatise, 
written in 1620 ; and portions at least of others copied later by 
Bruodin and O'Heyn. But from 1650 the destruction was so 
utter, the blow so crushing, the slaughter so immense, that all idea 
of recording particular incidents seems to have been abandoned 
in despair for nearly a century f and Bruodin, who published in 
1669, O'Heyn in 1706, and De Burgo still later, were the first 
who resumed the interrupted task. Hence there are immense de- 
ficiencies in the collection of the lives of our Irish martyrs ; and 
although I have collected as far as I could all those recorded, 
they can be regarded only as specimens, not as forming a com- 



* With the exception of the small tract, Morison's Threnodia, published at Innspruck ir 
1659. 



iO Preface. 

plete enumeration, especially as regards the period from 1640 to 
1680. 

I have undertaken to collect the biographies of those who suf- 
fered for the Catholic faith, not to write a contribution to the 
political history of Ireland ; hence the scheme of my work does 
not embrace the lives of those, however glorious their career, 
however noble the cause for which they suffered, who did not 
suffer directly for that faith. The same rule has been observed by 
those who preceded me. Thus Bruodin says : " Neminem hie no- 
mino in bello justissimo a Catholicis in Hibernia, pro defensione 
fidei, regis et patriae incepto occisum, inde eorum hie facio 
memoriam qui omni jure, nominari merentur inter eos qui pro 
Christo certando occubuere." (P. 698.)* 

In the case of laymen, I have thus been led to omit many who 
no doubt were persecuted really on account of their religion, but 
nominally for political reasons ; in the case of priests there is 
much less difficulty. Bishop Heber MacMahon indeed, who fell 
at the head of his troops, although one of the noblest characters 
of his age, is excluded by Bruodin's rule ; but priests who, al- 
though non-combatants, were put to death in the discharge of 
their sacred duties when attending the dying on the battle-field, 
or exceptionally slain after the surrender of towns because 
priests, are clearly to be enumerated as martyrs. In the great 
majority of cases, however, there is no question whatever : the 
priests and bishops were imprisoned and put to death simply on 
account of their religion. Although, as in England, they may 
have been tried for treason, the treason consisted either of " a 
second refusal to take the oath acknowledging the queen's su- 
premacy, or having a second time defended th£ supremacy of 
the Roman See," (5 Eliz. cap. i.,) or "obtaining any bull, or 
persuading any one to be reconciled to the Church of Rome," 
(13 Eliz. cap. ii., and 23 Eliz. cap. i., and 3 Jac. cap. iv.,) or, 
" having been consecrated priest abroad, entering or remaining 
in the kingdom, or receiving, hiding, or assisting a priest," 
(27 Eliz. cap. ii.) And if my readers will turn to the lives of 



* So also Morison : " Non recenseo hie ullum in bello occisum, quamvis fidei causa 
occideretur." 



Preface. 1 1 

Archbishop O' Hurley, Archbishop Creagh, or Archbishop Plun- 
ket, they will see how little their deaths were due to anything 
save their religion. As, however, a good deal of misapprehension 
exists on this subject, it may be well briefly to trace the position 
of the Irish bishops and priests in relation to the civil govern- 
ment from the reign of Henry VIII. The church had never con- 
demned, nay, she had sanctioned the resistance of the Irish to 
the English invaders ; but from the time that their power became 
firmly established and was the only existing government within 
the pale, the ecclesiastics subject to their sway preached obe- 
dience to what was henceforth, in those districts, the only repre- 
sentative of authority. The case was very different in those 
parts of the country which preserved their independence for cen- 
turies later ; but, as I have before mentioned, there was not from 
the thirteenth century a national government exercising, or even 
claiming, supreme authority over the whole kingdom. In the 
sixteenth century the suzerainty of the English king was pretty 
generally acknowledged ; even the great O'Neill, although pre- 
serving a virtual independence, did not claim a perfectly inde- 
pendent sovereignty; and from the reign of Elizabeth, the sov- 
ereign of England was acknowledged as the only de facto ruler 
of Ireland. Hence bishops and priests, in pursuance of their 
duty of obedience to the powers that be, not only submitted them- 
selves, but preached the duty of submission to others. Thus 
Dr. Roothe under James I. wrote : 

" I know that the inhabitants of Ireland, the subjects of our 
king, are contented with the present peace, (as the subjects of 
the Roman empire under Augustus ;) I know how they detest 
the tumults of war, and desire to devote themselves to the arts 
of peace and enjoy its sweets ; I know they desire nothing more 
than the happiness of the king and his offspring, and that under 
their auspices may be firmly established the much-desired peace 
and indulgence toward the Irish, both in respect to other mat- 
ters and especially in those matters which regard religion, the 
divine worship, and the profession and practices of the ancient 
faith." 

On the accession of Charles I. the Irish acknowledged him as 
their legitimate king; and when his English subjects rebelled 



12 Preface. 

against him, the Irish defended his cause with arms ; and the 
Catholic synod of Kilkenny in 1641, presided over by Hugh 
O'Reilly, Archbishop of Armagh, declared : " Whereas, the war 
which now in Ireland the Catholics do maintain against sectaries, 
and chiefly against Puritans, is for the defence of the Catholic 
religion, for the maintenance of the prerogative and royal rights 
of our gracious King Charles," and ordered the following oath 
to be taken by all : " I, A. B., do profess, swear, and protest, be- 
fore God and his angels, that I will, during my life, bear true 
faith and allegiance to my Sovereign Lord Charles, by the grace 
of God King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and to his 
heirs and lawful successors." The Confederates of Kilkenny, 
indeed, very rightly sought at the same time to secure freedom 
for their own religion, and the exercise of their own civil rights ; 
but it is essential to remember that the Confederation of Kil- 
kenny sought to maintain the rights of Ireland under the existing 
dynasty and government, (which, although alien and wrongful 
in its introduction, could then claim to be established by 
time,) not to substitute by revolution a new government for it. 
The scheme of making the Duke of Lorraine king of Ireland 
found little favor, even when Charles was wholly unable to afford 
that protection which is the correlative of obedience. The Irish 
of the middle of the seventeenth century were, indeed, called 
rebels, and treated as such, but it was by those who were them- 
selves really rebels against their legitimate sovereign, the repub- 
licans of England ; and the Cromwellian persecution smote them 
alike for their fidelity to their religion and to their king. 

Under Charles II., also, the Irish Catholics were faithful sub- 
jects ; they were only too faithful to his brother James. But from 
the time when the dynasty of Orange was established on the throne, 
it was obeyed by the Catholic priests of Ireland, whose one rule 
was to mix as little as might be in secular politics, and under 
those successive and different governments, all alike alien in 
their origin, to observe the apostle's precept to be subject to the 
powers that be. This is well stated in the synodal decrees of 
the province of Armagh given by Dr. Renehan :* " All priests 

* Renehan's Bishops, p. 118. 



Preface. 1 3 

are to take care not to mix themselves up, either publicly or pri- 
vately, with affairs of state or of temporal government, nor to in- 
cur the enmity of the king's majesty or of the temporal governors, 
unless only it be by discharging their duty to God and their 
flocks in the administration of spirituals, leaving to Caesar what 
is Caesar's, and to God what is God's." 

But if they were ever ready to obey in worldly matters the 
various temporal rulers who governed Ireland, they were inflexi- 
ble in preserving their own and their people's higher spiritual 
allegiance to their Divine Ruler and his vicegerent on earth, and 
to them we owe the preservation of our noblest and most endur- 
ing nationality, our Catholicity. Of them it may well be said, 
" They took care of their nation, and delivered it from destruc- 
tion." Rightly may we "praise these men of renown and our 
fathers in their generation," for they preserved for us the faith, 
through such a persecution as has rarely, if ever, elsewhere been 
endured : " they had trials of mockeries and stripes, of bands and 
prisons, they were stoned, they were cut asunder, they were 
tempted, they were put to death by the sword, they wandered 
about in sheep-skins, in goat-skins, being in want, distressed, of 
whom the world was not worthy. But in all these things they 
overcame, because of him who loved us ;" and by their sufferings 
has been preserved to Ireland, not only the faith, but also the 
spirit of fidelity and sacrifice of which they have left such glori- 
ous examples. The roll of those who suffered open violence for 
the faith closes with 1745, but not then ended the tale of those 
who were faithful even unto death. 

For one hundred years more (until 1829) did Irish Catholics 
submit to the privation of every worldly advantage rather than 
abandon their faith* " accounting all things as dross that they 
might gain Christ." Nay, even at a later date, when in 1847 famine 
and pestilence smote the land ; when " our skin was burnt as in 
an oven by reason of the violence of the famine ; when the tongue 
of the suckling child stuck to the roof of his mouth for thirst ; 
when the little ones asked for bread and there was none to break 
it to them, and they breathed out their souls on the breasts of 

• "Manura suam misit hostis ad omnia desiderabilia ejm. w 



14 Preface. 

their mothers ;" when it might truly be said, " It was better with 
them that were slain by the sword than with them that died with 
hunger •" and when the generous people of England, of France, 
of Italy, and of every other Christian land sent abundant alms 
to our famishing people, there were found in some districts of 
Ireland men base enough to use hunger as an instrument of tor- 
ture to make the poor forswear their religion, who offered food 
and clothing as the price of apostasy, and tempted our starving 
peasants to barter, like Esau, their birthright of faith for a mess 
of pottage. And there were found hundreds, I might say thou- 
sands — old men, and weak women, and tender children, whose 
names, unrecorded here, are registered in heaven — who spurned 
the temptation, as their ancestors had done before them, turned 
fainting from the food that was the wages of sin, and purchased 
an eternal kingdom by a death of hunger, imitating him who 
" chose rather to be afflicted with the people of God than to have 
the pleasure of sin for a time," because, like him, " they looked to 
the reward." And others there were who, when called upon by 
the representatives of that alien church, which for three centuries 
had sought in vain to bring them into its fold, either to send 
their children to schools of error or to abandon the occupation 
of the land on which they lived, hesitated not, but left home and 
country and all that made life dear, and became dwellers in a 
strange land. Truly they remembered " that we have not here 
a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come ; for they that do 
these things signify that they seek a country and that they de- 
sire a better, that is to say, a heavenly country." 

It cannot, then, be doubtful that the brief records of those who 
suffered for the Catholic faith in Ireland will be welcome to their 
descendants ; nor will they be without interest even for strangers 
and members of another church. The age of strife and religious 
persecution is paSt : the descendants of the persecutors and the 
persecuted are now citizens of a common country, and can re- 
spect the noble deeds of all her former children. The valor and 
endurance of her martial sons are a subject of pride, whether dis- 
played in the defence of Londonderry or of Limerick, at Clontarf 
or Benburb. Far more does the record of undeserved sufferings 
heroically endured for conscience' sake claim the respect of all ; 



Preface. 15 

to none can it be ungrateful, save to those, if any such there be, 
who would renew the persecutions which caused them. Of 
course, these memorials have a deeper interest for those who are 
of the household of the faith ; for the sons of those who for the 
faith 

" Spared neither land nor gold, 
Nor son nor wife, nor limb nor life, 
In the brave days of old ;" 

for those who now fill the posts in the church once occupied by 
martyrs. To them, and to their predecessors, may I apply the 
words addressed after the French Revolution to the glorious 
clergy of France : 

" Hail, venerable priests of the Roman Catholic Church ! 
You have, indeed, suffered much, but you have not yet come to 
the city of the living God and the company of the angels, where 
the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ has glorified those whom he 
called in persecution and justified by the shedding of blood for 
the faith. Let us strew a few flowers on the tombs of our martyrs. 
Hail, you who were mighty in war, and fought with the old ser- 
pent ! O glorious confessors of our God and his Christ ! to 
whom it was given not only to believe in him, but also to suffer 
for him — you who endured so much ignominy, who as exiles trod 
the narrow way of the cross amidst the applause of heaven and 
the wonder of the earth, behold me at your feet ! How beauti- 
ful are the feet of those who were witnesses to God even unto 
the ends of the earth ! And you who, contemning the tempest 
and the swelling waves, ceased not intrepidly to cast your nets ; 
you who, placed, as it were, in the fiery furnace, continued 
to bless God, to do good to men, to guard your flocks ; you, 
burning and shining lights, who, when you might no longer be as 
a light placed on a candlestick to shine to all in the house, 
sought to gather as many as you might under the bushel where 
you were hidden, as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings 
— sacred leaven which preserved the whole body from perversion 
1 — you blessed priests, to whom the Lord gave the spirit of heroic 
endurance in the midst of dangers — hail, true soldiers of Christ! 
Hail, holy priests, worthy of double honor ! Praise be to God 



1 6 Preface, 

who gave to you this victory, through Christ our Lord ! Happy 
persecution which brought you such a reward ! Happy prisons 
through which you reached the heavenly palaces ! Happy death 
which gave you eternal life ! Holy fathers, glorious brothers, who 
now joyfully stand around the throne of the Lamb, look down 
from heaven, and bring help to your brethren, your flocks, your 
countrymen. We are still in the strife, while you have atta ined 
the happy rest. Aid us by your prayers."* 

* Arvisenet, Manual. Sacen 




INDEX OF PRINCIPAL WORKS REFERRED TO. 



I have thought that some of my younger readers would like to 
have a short account of the principal works of old authors here quoted, 
with a note of where they may be found. I may here point out that the 
plan I have observed is to give wherever possible the " Memorials" 
in the exact words of the original writers from whom they are derived. 
This plan has the advantage not only of enabling the reader to judge 
for himself, but of presenting a more lively and truthful picture than 
any modern reswne could give : it tells the reader not only the facts, 
but how those facts affected contemporaries, and how they judged 
them, and thus furnishes a lively picture of the times — a record not 
only of the actions, but of the thoughts and feelings of the men of 
those days. I need hardly point out that the language of those old 
writers is not always that which we should use : thus, they designate 
as sectaries and heretics those whom we are accustomed to call " our 
dissenting brethren ;" but it would be absurd to make those who were 
fleeing into the wilderness before the exterminating sword of the 
Cromwellians speak of them as "erring brethren." Time heals 
wounds and obliterates animosities. I have let the men of old speak 
their own thoughts in their own language, as we do ours. 

Annates Ordinis Minorum. Auctore Luca Waddingo. Romas, 1731. Wadding's well- 
known annals of his own order. This work is to be found in all our great libraries, as the 
British Museum, Trinity College, Maynooth College, etc. 

Scriptores Ordinis Minorum, quibus accessit syllabus eorum qui ex eodem ordiiie pro fide 
Christi fortiter occubuerunt. Romae, 1806. This is the revised and continued edition, by 
Thisboralea, of the work by Wadding. It is in Trinity College, etc. 

Acta Sanctorum. Colgan. Lovanii, 1645. The preface gives an account of the death of 
Fathers Fleming and Ward, two of the compilers. It is in the British Museum, Trinity Col- 
lege, etc. 

Hibernia Doininicana. De Burgo. Col Agrippinse, 1762. This well-known work is in 
all our public and many of our private libraries. 



1 8 Index of Principal Works referred to. 

Monumenta Dominicana. Fonseca. Romse, 1665. This is not an uncommon work ; I have 
myself a copy. 

Historice Catholicce Compendium. Auctore O'Sullevano Bearro. Ulissiponi, 1621. The 
original is in the British Museum, Trinity College, etc. The reprint of 185c is to be had 
easily. 

Relatio Persecutionis Hibernice. Auctore Dominico a Rosario, (O'Daly.) And Hist. 
Gerald. Ulissip. 1655. Is in the British Museum, Trinity Library, etc. A translation of it 
by Father Meehan was published by Duffy in 1847. 

Propugnaculum Catholicce Veritatis, etc. Auctore R. P. F. Antonio Bruodino. Pragse, 
1669. Is in Maynooth Library. 

De Regno Hibernice. A Petro Lombardo. Lovanii, 1632. Is in the British Museum, 
etc. 

Lyra sive Anacephalosis Hibern. Auctore T. Carve. Sulzbaci, 1666. Is in the British 
Museum, etc. 

Relatio Viridica Provincice Hibernice Ordinis Minorum. Auctore R. P. le Marchant, 
165 1. I have seen this very curious account of the Franciscan province of Ireland at that 
time only in the Bollandists' Library, Brussels. 

A nalecta Sacra Nova et Mira de Rebus Catholicorum in Hibernia pro Fide et Religi- 
one gestis. Auctore N. Philadelpho, (Dr. David Roothe, Bishop of Ossory.) Colonise, 1617. 
And Processus Martyrialis, etc., by the same author. The first printed in 1617, the second 
in 1619. The first is a general account of the history of the time ; the second contains a cata- 
logue and lives of those who up to that date had suffered for the faith. The first exists 
in the Bollandists', Louvain, and Antwerp libraries, and a copy is in the possession of his 
eminence Cardinal Cullen. Of the second I only know three copies, one in the Bollandists' 
Library, one in the library of Louvain University, and the third in MS. in my possession, for 
which I am indebted to the kindness of the Rev. T. O'Hea. 

Societas Jesu usque ad Sanguinem, etc. Tanner. Pragae, 1675. This volume of lives 
of the Jesuits of these countries who suffered for the faith is to be found in the British Mu- 
seum and some of cur other libraries. 

Collections toward Illustrating the Biography of Members of the Society of Jesus. Exe 
ter, 1838. By Dr. Oliver. This work is to be found in most libraries. 

Persecutio Hibernice. By the Irish Seminary of Seville. Printed 1619. I am indebted 
for my knowledge of this work, which is in the library of St. Isidore's, Rome, to Dr. Moran. 

Sanctorale Cisterciensum. Valladolid, 1613. For references to this, which is to be found 
in the private library of Propaganda, Rome, I am also indebted to Dr. Moran. 

Historical Review of the Civil Wars in Ireland. Curry. Dublin, 1775. Is in all our 
libraries. 

Noticias Historicas de las tres Florentissimas Provincias del Celeste Orden de la Sma. 
Trinidad. A Fr. Domingo Lopez, etc. Madrid, 1714. This curious but, I fear, apocry- 
phal work is to be found in the library of Maynooth College, and in the private library of 
Propaganda. 

Theologia Tripartita. Ardsdekin. Antverpiae, 1686. At the end is an account of Dr. 
Talbot, Dr. Plunket, and some others. It is a common book, and in all our libraries. 

Pii A ntistitis Icon, sive de Vita et Morte Reverendi D. Francisci Kirwan, A lladensis 
Episcopi. Authore loanne Lynchaeo, Archidiacono Tuamensi. Maclovii, 1649. The copy 
in the Grenville Library, in the British Museum, is the only one known to exist. On the fly- 
leaf is written by R. Heber, to whom the book belonged: "I believe this to be the rarest 



Ma?iuscripts in the Burgundian Library. 19 

volume in existence connected with the history of Ireland, and the portrait of Bishop Kirwan 
prefixed is totally unknown." The biographer, John Lynch, titular Archdeacon of Tuam 
fled out of Ireland into France after the surrender of Galway to Cromwell, and is the author 
of the scarce and well-known work, Cambrensis Eversiis. A translation by Father Meehan 
was printed by Duffy in 1848. 

Epilogus Chro7tologice exponens succinate convenlus et fundationes Sacri Ordinis Pre- 
dicatorum in Regno Hibernice. Lovanii, 1706. Fr. Ioanne O'Heyn, O.P. It gives a very 
short account of each convent, and its most remarkable alumni. The book is scarce ; the 
only copy I know of in Ireland is in the library of the Dominican convent, Galway. 

Threnodia Hiherno Catholica, sive Planctus Universalis Totius Cleri et Populi Regn 
Hibernice. Per F. M. Morisonum, Ord. Min. Strict Obs. CEniponti, 1659. Exists in the 
Grenville Library, British Museum. I do not know of any other copy. 

I need hardly mention here, as they are so well known : 

Dr. Renehan's Collections on Church History, edited by Rev. D. McCarthy. Dublin, 
1861. 

Dr. Moran's Lives of Archbislwps of Dublin ; Life of Dr. Plunket ; History of Perse- 
cutions, etc. 

Father Meehan's valuable translation of C Sullivan Lynch and Others, and his last work, 
Flight of the Earls. 

Father Cogan's Diocese of Meath. 

The various calendars of State Papers published by the Record Office. 



MANUSCRIPTS IN THE BURGUNDIAN LIBRARY, BRUSSELS. 



No. 2307. A Catalogue of tJte Martyrs, etc., of the Society of Jesus, quoted as Catalog. 
Soc. Jesu. It is a catalogue of all those of the society who had recently (about 1700) suffered 
for the faith. 

No. 2159. Magna Supplicia a Persecutorihus aliquot Catholicorum in Ibernia Sumpta. 
Written about 1600. A very curious collection of contemporary anecdotes. 

No. 2167. Compendium Martyrii Reveretidi Cornelii O'Dovanii. An account of the 
martyrdom of Bishop Dovany in 1612, written by a contemporary. Bound up with the 
same is a curious letter, dated 15th April, 1612, from the Rev. Father Fleming, of the Order 
of St. Dominick, dated from the convent of Dundalk. This is curious as showing that at 
that date the Dominican convent of Carlingford had been transferred to Dundalk. 

No. 3195. De Provincia Hibernice Ordinis Sancti Francisci Tractatus a Rev. Do* • 
tuito Mooftey. Anno 1627. This account of the Franciscan province of Ireland has been 
frequently referred to, and a good part of it published in Duffy's Magazute by Father 
Meehan. 

No. 3824. Lettres des Jesuites A nglais, or Correspondance des Peres Jesuites Irlandait. 
This is the collection of letters from Irish Jesuits and others, giving the life of Henry 
Slingsby, which my readers will find under the year 1641. 



MARTYRS AND CONFESSORS, 



Anno IS 30. 



It has frequently been remarked as extraordinary that 
the early annals of the Irish Church did not record a sin- 
gle martyr : such was the gentleness and docility of the 
pagans of Ireland of the time of St. Patrick that their con- 
version was effected without provoking any violence or 
the death of a single missionary. But the history of the 
Irish Church was not to be peaceable to the end. Heresy 
smote where paganism had spared, and the sixteenth and 
seventeenth centuries saw the Church of Ireland purpled 
in the blood of her martyrs. 

King Henry VIII., having plunged England into the 
guilt of heresy and schism, resolved to make Ireland a 
sharer in the same fate. 

Accordingly, the death of Archbishop Allen, in 1534, 
having caused a vacancy in the see of Dublin, Henry ap- 
pointed, in March, 1535, Doctor George Browne, an Eng- 
lish Augustinian friar, to the vacant bishopric ; and, without 
any confirmation from Rome, he was consecrated by Cran- 
mer, and received from him, in compliance with the schis- 



22 Martyrs and Confessors 

matical act lately passed in the English Parliament, the 
pallium and other insignia of his dignity. 

This schismatical intruder into the see of Dublin found 
a zealous coadjutor in the then Bishop of Meath, Doctor 
Edward Staples, an Englishman, who had been appointed 
to the see of Meath,* in 1530, by Pope Clement VI L, at the 
request of Henry VIII. By their advice, a Parliament was 
convened in 1536, which, after the spiritual proctors had 
been illegally deprived of the right of voting, and great 
menaces on the part of the king had been used, at length 
passed an act vesting the supremacy of the church in the 
king. As Henry was thus proclaimed head of the church, 
it was deemed necessary to secure him a tribute from the 
ecclesiastical property. Hence an act was passed giving 
him the first-fruits of every benefice and the twentieth 
part of the profits of all spiritual benefices. 

The same Parliament, which thus, at the dictation of the 
king, waged war against our faith, also waged war against 
our national usages, and even against our existence as a 
people. Thus we find one act passed for encouraging 
"the English order, habit, and language," while it pre- 
scribed that spiritual preferment should be given " only to 
such as could speak English, unless, after four proclamations 
in the next market-town, such could not be found." Should 
any Irishman perchance be promoted to any benefice, there 
was an oath imposed, " that he would endeavor to learn 
and teach the English tongue, to all and every being un- 
der his rule, and to bid the beads in the English tongue, 
and preach the word of God in English, if he can preach." 
These legislators evidently believed it impossible to make 
the Irish embrace heresy unless they could make them 



* Staples really was Bishop of Meath, having been duly appointed and consecrated, al- 
though he afterward apostatized ; but Browne never was Archbishop of Dublin, never hav- 
ing been lawfully elected or consecrated. He was, as he himself said, " made {archbishop) 
by the king-." See his letter quoted in Dr. Moran's A rchbishops of Dublin, p. 4- 



In the Reign of Henry VIII. 23 

cease to be Irish.* But it was one thing to have laws 
passed by a timorous Parliament, it was another to enforce 
their observance. In a large part of Ireland, inhabited by 
the original Irish, the authority of Parliament was little re- 
spected, and even in the pale the clergy and people ap- 
pear to have very little regarded the parliamentary decrees 
which transferred the supremacy from the pope to the 
king. Except Browne and Staples, no bishops appear to 
have leaned toward the new opinions, as they were call- 
ed ; and in 1538 we find Browne writing to Cromwell that 
not even in the diocese of Dublin "can I persuade or in- 
duce onye, either religious or secular, sithens my comyng 
over, ons to preach e the word of God, or the just title of 
our moste illustrious prince." f But the most urgent de- 
sire of Henry was not the change of the religious opinions 
of the people, but the plunder of the wealth of the church. 
In 1536, the first grant of religious houses was made to 
the king by the authority of the Irish Parliament. This 
grant comprised three hundred and seventy monasteries. 
In the following year, by virtue of a commission under the 
Great Seal of England, eight abbeys were suppressed, and 
in 1538 a further order was issued for the suppression of all 
the monasteries and abbeys. In some cases the superiors 
of these religious houses surrendered without opposition 
the charge entrusted unto them, but whenever they could 
not be induced by threats or promises to resign their mo- 
nasteries to the crown, severer measures were resorted 
to ; and one instance is especially recorded of Manus 
O'Fihily, the last Abbot of St. Mary's, Thurles, who, on a 
refusal to comply with the wishes of the crown, was car- 
ried a prisoner to Dublin, and subjected to a long and 
painful imprisonment.^ 

I cannot better describe the persecution of the Catho- 

* See Dr. Moran, chap. i. t Diocese of Meath, p. 90. 

+ Grose's Irish Antiquities, ii. 85, quoted by Dr. Moran. 



24 Martyrs and Confessors 

lies than in the words of the Four Masters (ad an. 1537) : 
"A heresy and a new error broke out in England, the 
effects of pride, vainglory, avarice, sensual desire, and the 
prevalence of a variety of scientific and philosophical 
speculations, so that the people of England went into op- 
position to the pope and to Rome. At the same time 
they followed a variety of opinions, and adopting the old 
law of Moses, after the manner of the Jewish people, they 
gave the title of head of the church of God, during his 
reign, to the king. There were enacted by the king and 
council new laws and statute's after their own will. They 
ruined the orders who were permitted to hold worldly pos- 
sessions, namely, monks, canons regular, nuns, and Breth- 
ren of the Cross ; and also the four mendicant orders — the 
Franciscans, the Preachers, the Carmelites, and the Augus- 
tinians. The possessions and livings of all these were 
taken up for the king. They broke into the monasteries ; 
they sold their roofs and bells, so there was not a monas- 
tery from Arann of the Saints to the Iccian Sea that was 
not broken and scattered, except only a few in Ireland, 
which escaped the notice and attention of the English. 
They further burned and broke the famous images, shrines, 
and relics of Ireland and England. After that they burn- 
ed, in like manner, the celebrated image of Mary, which 
was at Ath-Trium, which used to perform wonders and 
miracles, and at which were healed the blind, the deaf, the 
lame, and the sufferers from all diseases ; and the staff of 
Jesus, which was in Dublin, performing miracles from the 
days of St. Patrick down to that time, and which was in 
the hands of Christ while he was among men. They also 
made archbishops and bishops for themselves, and, al- 
though great was the persecution of the Roman emperors 
against the church, it is not probable that so great a per- 
secution as this ever came upon the world ; so it is impos- 
sible to tell or narrate its description, unless it shou d be 



In the Reign of Henry VIII. 2$ 

told by him who saw it." Under the year 1540, we shall 
meet with a particular instance, recorded by the same an- 
nalist, of the martyrdom of some of their own order. 



Anno 1539. 

The Spanish writer Lopez gives, under this year and 
1545, the martyrdom of a large number of Trinitarian fa- 
thers, but, as there is great doubt as to the accuracy of 
those accounts in Lopez, I shall not here insert them. 



Anno 1540. 

FRANCISCAN FATHERS OF THE MONASTERY OF MONAGHAN. 

" The English, in every place throughout Ireland where 
they established their power, persecuted and banished the 
nine religious orders, and particularly they destroyed the 
monastery of Monaghan, and beheaded the guardian and a 
number of the friars." — Annals of Four Masters, at this 
year. 

Anno 1560. 

WILLIAM WALSH, BISHOP OF MEATH, CONFESSOR. 

During the reign of Henry VIII., Meath had been dis- 
graced by an apostate bishop. Dr. Edward Staples, an 
Englishman, had been appointed, in 1530, at the request of 
Henry VIIL, Bishop of Meath. As to the early years of 
his episcopate little is known. In 1534, he fled to England, 
in order to escape the anger of Silken Thomas, then in 
rebellion, to whom he had made himself obnoxious. In 
1535, he returned to the diocese of Meath, deeply infected 
with the principles of the Reformation ; and from that time 



26 Martyrs and Confessors 

he was a willing assistant of Dr. Browne, the intruder 
into the see of Dublin, in the work of despoiling the 
monasteries and endeavoring to force the new heresy on 
the Irish people. 

Mary ascended the throne in 1553, and in April, 1554, 
Dr. Dowdall, Archbishop of Armagh, lately returned from 
banishment, and Dr. William Walsh, received a com- 
mission to proceed against immoral ecclesiastics, and to 
depose such as were married and impenitent. By their 
authority, Edward Staples was, in June of the same year, 
removed from the diocese of Meath, deprived of his bene- 
fice, and suspended from all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and 
this Dr. William Walsh was afterward duly appointed 
Bishop of Meath. 

Sir James Ware says that he was a native of Waterford ; 
but another authority, who certainly had better opportu- 
nities of information, namely, John alias Malachy Hortrey, 
a Cistercian monk of the Abbey of Holy Cross, in a manu- 
script treatise entitled De Cistertiensiicm Hibemorum 
Viris Illustribus, states that William Walsh was born at 
Dunboyne, county Meath, joined the Cistercian order, and 
lived in the Abbey of Bective, previous to its suppression. 
Whatever doubt there may be about the place of his birth 
and his early history, there is none whatever as to his 
eminent virtues, distinguished abilities, and the heroic 
fortitude with which he bore numerous and prolonged 
sufferings for the faith. His unbending orthodoxy and 
opposition to the innovations of Henry VIII. and Edward 
VI. marked him out for promotion after the accession of 
Mary, and accordingly we find him associated with the 
zealous primate, Dr. Dowdall, in the commission to drive 
from the sanctuary all such as were faithless to their trust. 
A conge d 'elire was issued to the Archdeacon and clergy 
of Meath for the election of Dr. Walsh, and, after having 
received the royal assent and the confirmation of the Holy 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 27 

See, he addressed the following petition to Mary and 
Philip : 

" Petition of William Walsh, stating that he was elected 
bishop by the chapter and clergy of the bishopric of Meath, 
and had for his consecration their graces' letters-patent ; 
but, not having his lawful consecration from the Universal 
Catholic Church, like other bishops, he could not, with good 
conscience, be consecrated ; and stating that he was sent 
into Ireland at his own cost, by commission, to deprive 
certain married bishops and priests, and was so occupied 
in execution of this office that he could not attend to his 
consecration. He therefore prays a grant of the tem- 
poralities of the see from the date of the deprivation of the 
late incumbent, which was the feast of Saints Peter and 
Paul last past." 

On the receipt of this petition the king and queen 
wrote to the Lord Deputy, the Chancellor, and the Coun- 
cil of Ireland, thus : 

" We send you herein enclosed a supplication exhibited 
to us by our loving subject, Dr. Walsh, Bishop of Meath 
elect. He desires the temporalities of the bishopric from 
the time of the deprivation of the late incumbent. Our 
pleasure is that you shall give order to make forth an 
utterlemagne, under our Great Seal, whereby he may enjoy 
the whole temporalities of the bishopric from the time 
of the amotion or deprivation of the late incumbent." — 
Oct. 1 8th, 1st and 2d Ma?y and Philip. 

Dr. Walsh was consecrated about the close of 1554, and 
immediately applied himself with zeal and energy to reform 
abuses, and to heal the wounds which during the last two 
reigns had been inflicted on faith, morals, and discipline. 
The period of his usefulness was, however, destined to be 
brief, and he had time merely to stimulate his priests and 
to fortify his diocese when the gathering storm burst over 
the Irish Church, and sacrificed the Bishop of Meath 



28 Martyrs and Confessors 

among its first and noblest victims. Queen Mary died 
in 1558, and was succeeded by Elizabeth, who at once 
publicly embraced the reformed tenets, and proceeded to 
have them enforced on all. In 1560, an act was passed, 
under the deputyship of the Earl of Suffolk, which ordered 
all ecclesiastical persons, judges, officers, justices, mayors, 
and all the other queen's officers, to take the oath of 
supremacy under penalty of forfeiture, and also enacted 
that if any person should, by writing, printing, teaching, 
preaching, by express words, deed, or act, maintain any 
foreign spiritual jurisdiction, he should for the first offence 
forfeit all his goods and suffer one year's imprisonment, 
for the second offence should incur the penalty of prae- 
munire, and for the third be deemed guilty of high treason. 
{2d Eliz. cap. i.) 

It was now the fidelity of Dr. Walsh was tested to the 
utmost. Had he, like a few of his contemporaries, sacrific- 
ed conscience to expediency, worldly comfort and ephe- 
meral honor were soon to have been his portion. But he 
felt he had a higher authority to obey than Queen Eliza- 
beth, and hence he repudiated her pretensions to rule the 
church, and guarded his flock, even at the peril of his life, 
against her parliamentary creed. Ware thus narrates the 
event : 

" After the return of the Earl of Sussex to Ireland, let- 
ters came from her majesty signifying her pleasure for a 
general meeting of the clergy of Ireland, and the estab- 
lishment of the Protestant religion through the several 
dioceses of this kingdom. Among the bishops, the Bishop 
of Meath was very zealous for the Romish Church ; not 
content with what offers her majesty had proposed, but 
very much enraged, (after the assembly had dispersed 
themselves,) he fell to preach against the Common Prayer 
in his diocese at Trim, which was newly come over and 
ordered to be observed, for which the lord lieutenant 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 29 

confined him till he acquainted her majesty with it, who 
sent over her orders to clap him up in prison. Within a 
few months after, persisting in the same mind, he was 
deposed, and the bishopric of Meath was about two years 
vacant, till, by her majesty's provision, Hugh Brady became 
Walsh's successor."* 

On the 1 6th of July, 1565, Adam Loftus, Protestant 
Archbishop of Armagh, writes to Sir William Cecil : 

" The Xlllth of this monthe by vertu of our commission 
for cawsis ecclesiastycall, we committed to the castell of 
Dublyn, doctor Welcke, late byssippe of Methe, there to 
remayne untill the queenes majesties pleasure were 
knowne. He refused the othe and to answer such articles 
as we required of him ; and besides that, ever sithens the 
last parliament, he hath manifestly contemned and openly 
showed himself to be a mislyker of all the queenes ma- 
jesties proceedings ; he openly protested before all the 
people the same day he was before us, that he would never 
communicate or be present (by his will) where the service 
should be ministrid, for it was against his conscience and 
(as he thought) against God's woord. If it shall seeme 
good to your honour and the rest of her majesties most 
honourable counseyle, in myne opinion, it wer fit he showld 
be sent to England, and peradventure by conferringe with 
the lerned bishoppes there, he might be brought to sum 
conformitie ; he is one of great creadit amongst his coun- 
trimen, and uppon whome (as tutchinge cawsis of re- 
ligion) thay wholy depend."! 

As no pretext could be devised for leading him to the 
scaffold, he once more received the culprit's chains, (he bore 



* Ware's A nnah, 1560. I need hardly say it was only the temporalities of the see of Meath 
which were given to Brady. William Walsh continued lawful Bishop of Meath till his death. 

t All his biographers agree that Dr. Walsh passed between twelve and thirteen years in 
prison ; and he escaped about Christmas, 1572. He would therefore appear to have been im- 
prisoned a first time in 1560, and more definitely consigned to prison in 1565. See Henri' 
quez and his Epitaph a£. Moran and Cogaru 



3<D Martyrs and Confessors 

the scars of them to his tomb,) and was reconducted to his 
former prison ; this was " a subterraneous dungeon, damp 
and noisome — not a ray of light penetrated thither ; and 
for thirteen years this was his unvarying abode." During 
all that time his food was of the coarsest kind, and, with 
the exception of rare intervals, when the intercession of 
some influential friends obtained a momentary relaxation, 
he was allowed no occupation that could cheer the tedium 
of his imprisonment. In all this lengthened martyrdom, 
prayer was his resource, and, as he himself subsequently 
avowed, he oftentimes passed whole days and nights over- 
whelmed with heavenly consolations, so that his dungeon 
seemed transformed into a paradise of delights. To pre- 
clude the possibility of idleness, he procured a bed made 
of twisted cords, and whensoever his mind was fatigued 
with prayer, he applied himself to untie those cords, and 
often was he well wearied with the exertion before he 
could reunite them to compose himself to sleep. 

His persecutors, overcome by his constancy, and finding 
his fervor in spiritual contemplation a continual reproach 
to their own wickedness, at length, about Christmas, 1572, 
connived at his escape. Sailing from our shores, his only 
regret was to abandon the field of his spiritual labors, and 
to leave his flock defenceless amid the many enemies that 
now compassed its destruction. He says himself, (letter 
of July 5th, 1573,) " I was snatched from that place by the 
liberality and care of my friends, and having met with the 
opportunity of a ship of Brittany, I threw myself into it, 
not heeding my age, which was above sixty years, or my 
state of health, deeming it safer to trust my life to the dan- 
ger of the sea than again to experience the cruelty of the 
enemies of the Catholic religion." For sixteen days he 
was tossed on the waves by a violent storm, and was at 
length driven in shipwreck on the coast of France. 
Weighed down with the infirmities which he had contract- 



Iji the Reign of Elizabeth. 31 

ed in prison, and with the burden of more than sixty 
years, he was compelled to remain for six months unknown 
and abandoned in Nantes. At length, receiving aid from 
the nuncio, he proceeded to Paris, and thence to Spain, 
The closing years of his life were spent in Alcala.* A 
noble Spanish lady received him into her house, and at- 
tended him as though he were an angel from heaven. 
The sores which yet remained from his dungeon chains 
she kissed as the trophies of his martyrdom. She would 
allow none but herself to wait on him, and on her knees 
she usually dressed his wounds and ministered to his 
wants. From this asylum of charity, thus providentially 
prepared for him, he passed to the convent of the Cisterci- 
an fathers in the same city, and there, on the 4th of Janu- 
ary, 1577, he happily closed his earthly life, which, as many 
attested, he had never sullied by any stain of mortal sin.f 
His remains were placed in the Collegiate Church of Saint 
Secundums, and a monument erected over them by the 
Bishop of Grenada, with the following inscription : 

" Here lieth William Walsh, a Cistercian monk, and Bi- 
shop of Meath, who, after thirteen years' imprisonment, 
and many labors for the Catholic faith,, at last died in 
exile at Alcala, on the day before the nones of January, 

1577" 

He is held in veneration by his Cistercian brothers as a 
holy martyr in the cause of the Catholic faith, and his 
memory lives in benediction in the diocese he adorned. $ 



* Alcala, called by the Romans Complutum. It was here Cardinal Ximenes had the Cont- 
filutensian Polyglot, as it was called, printed. 

t " Con grandissima ragione fu questo stimato martire e ricevuto per santo come quello che 
in tuttoildecorso di sua vita mai con peccato grave aveva macchiata l'innocenzabattessimale." 
— Martyrolog. Cisterc. MS. ap. Moran. 

% The life of Dr. Walsh I have taken entirely from his two learned modern biographers, 
Dr. Moran, in his introduction to the History of the Catholic Archbishops of Dublin, and 
Rev. A. Cogan, Diocese of Meath, where the reader will find the original authorities re- 
ferred to. 



32 Martyrs and Confessors 

Anno 1565. 

CONOR MACCARTHY, ROGER MACCONGAIL, AND FERGAL 
WARD, FRANCISCAN FRIARS * 

The occurrence in which these confessors suffered is 
undoubted, but there is a slight confusion as to the name 
of the second. " In this year the heretical soldiers attack- 
ed the convent of the Franciscans in Armagh, and called 
upon such of the brethren as had not effected their escape 
to renounce the Catholic religion, and acknowledge the 
queen's supremacy. Upon their refusal, they were bound 
and most cruelly flogged to make them abjure, but in vain, 
and the soldiers at length left them half-dead." This is 
the first instance of military floggings for religion's sake ; 
but from this date they never ceased in Ireland until the 
present century, many innocent Catholics having been 
flogged to death in 1798 : among others, two who died un- 
der the stripes in the barrack of Dundalk. 



Anno 1568. 

REV. DAVID WOLF, S.J. 

The life of this remarkable confessor has been so well 
and ably written by Dr. Moran that, with the kind permis- 
sion of the author, we give it in his words. Father 
Wolf is enumerated in the catalogue of martyrs and con- 
fessors given by Dr. Roothe in his Analecta. 

One of the most remarkable men who, during the fiist 
years of Elizabeth's reign, labored in our Irish Church to 

* The only notices I have found of these confessors is in Luke Wadding's Scriptores Ordi- 
nis Minorum, and his Annales Ordinis Min. ii. 1291. In the first passage their names are 
given as Conacius Macuarta, Rogerus MacCongail, and Fergallus Bardeus. In the second 
passage Macuarta and MacCongail are not mentioned ; but the sufferings of Fergallus Var- 
doeus and Henricus Femlamaidh are commemorated. Probably there were four who suffered. 
Apparently Wadding has confounded Fergial Ward, who was hanged in 1577, with the others 
who were thus scourged in 1565. See later, at the year 1577. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 33 

gather together the scattered stones of the sanctuary, was 
Father David Wolf, a member of the Order of St. Ignati- 
us. A native of Limerick, he spent seven years in Rome, 
imbibing the full spirit of his order, under the immediate 
guidance of its holy founder and St. Francis Borgia ; and 
in August, 1560, he was sent by the Holy See, with all 
the privileges of apostolic commissary, to confirm his 
countrymen in the faith, amid the impending persecutions 
of Elizabeth. His chief care was to propose learned and 
zealous men to fill the vacant sees of our island ; and the 
names of Richard Creagh, of Armagh, Donald McConghail, 
of Raphoe, Eugene O'Hart, of Achonry, Maurice McBrian, 
of Emly, to omit many others, are a sure guarantee of the 
fidelity with which he fulfilled this charge. 

Father Wolf resided, for the most part, in his native dio- 
cese ; but his jurisdiction extended to the whole island, 
and we find him incidentally referred to in contemporary 
records as visiting the district of Tyrone, and again as 
travelling through various dioceses of Connaught and Ul- 
ster. The English agents were filled with alarm at the pre- 
sence in the country of one who, by public acclamation, 
received the title of papal nuncio; and when, in 1561, 
Pope Pius IV. invited Queen Elizabeth to send her repre- 
sentatives to the Council of Trent, she absolutely refused, 
assigning as one of the chief reasons for her displeasure 
that "an Irishman (Father Wolf) had been sent from 
Rome to Ireland to excite their disaffection against her 
crown." So watchful were the agents of the English gov- 
ernment in pursuit of the Jesuit father that he was for sev- 
eral years unable to enter within the limits of the pale ; 
and we find him, when delegating his jurisdiction for Dub- 
lin and its vicinity to Father Newman, in 1563, affirming 
that, so many were the dangers which beset his journey 
thither, he feared to visit that district. 

Among the papers of the secret archives of the Vati- 



34 Martyrs and Confessors 

can there is one which was presented in 1560 to the Car- 
dinal Protector of Ireland, and which sketches the course 
to be pursued by the agents of the Holy See while per- 
forming the visitation of our island. A few extracts will 
suffice to prove how full of responsibility and peril was the 
mission entrusted to the disciple of St. Ignatius : " His 
first care shall be to visit the Catholic leaders, and especi- 
ally the four chief princes of the kingdom, to commend, in 
the name of his holiness, their unflinching constancy and 
zeal, and to encourage them to persevere in the defence of 
the Catholic faith." The bishops also were to be visited, 
" to see if they resided in their dioceses and instructed their 
flocks ; if they were attentive to the due decorum of the 
sacred edifices, and vigilant in selecting zealous and 
worthy ministers for the altar." As to the clergy, he was 
to inquire into their manner of administering the sacra- 
ments, and to afford them every aid, especially in adminis- 
tering the holy sacraments of confession and communion, 
in preaching the word of truth, and in exhorting their Cath- 
olic flocks to lead holy and Christian lives. Should any 
heretical minister be found, the agent of Rome was to 
guard the people against the contagion of his errors, and, 
above all, to seek, in the spirit of charity, to bring him 
back to the paths of truth. " He must also seek to estab- 
lish grammar-schools, supplying them with Catholic mas- 
ters, and thus remedy the great ignorance of the natives ; 
admonishing the parents to send their children to the 
schools, that thus they may be instructed in literature and 
morality, and at the same time acquire a meet knowledge 
of the saving truths of faith." If possible, some monas- 
teries were to be established, and exact discipline maintain- 
ed ; hospitals, too, were to be founded, and other places of 
refuge and succor for the poor. 

For these things, and for whatsoever else might be done, 
no reward or recompense, even in the name of alms, was 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 35 

to be received ; the salvation of souls alone was to be the 
moving spring, and the reward of every fatigue. Should 
the glory of God and the interest of religion require it, life 
itself was to be risked ; but in this the laws of Christian 
prudence were to be observed, and all undue temerity to 
be shunned. In fine, the Holy See was to be made ac- 
quainted with the real state of the Irish Church, the losses 
sustained by the Catholic faith, the perils to which religion 
was exposed, and the most opportune aid and succors were 
to be pointed out that could be granted to sustain the 
faithful in the dangers to which they were exposed. 

The course traced out in these " instructions" was exact- 
ly pursued by Father Wolf, and before the close of this 
chapter we shall have occasion to cite some of his letters, 
which, while they disclose precious details regarding the 
condition of our island, clearly demonstrate how indefati- 
gable he was in his labors, and how unceasingly he strug- 
gled to restore our suffering church to its primitive 
comeliness and fervor. 

One of the chief wants of Ireland at this period was a 
place of untainted instruction for Catholic youth. The 
monastic schools had been swept away by the persecution 
of Henry VIII., and now, in such districts as were acces- 
sible to the English arms, no mere Irishman or Catholic 
could, without risking liberty or life, seek to instruct his 
fellow-countrymen in the rudiments of literature and reli- 
gion. To meet this want, a " brief" was addressed by the 
holy father, on the 31st of May, 1564, to the newly con- 
secrated primate, Dr. Richard Creagh, and to Father 
David Wolf, empowering them to erect schools whereso- 
ever they should deem fit throughout the kingdom of Ire- 
land, and communicating to such schools all the privileges 
of a university ; while, at the same time, it was declared 
that these schools were necessary for the establishment 
of due order, and for the maintenance of the Catholic faith. 



$6 Martyrs and Confessors 

Neither Dr. Creagh, however, nor Father Wolf was allow- 
ed sufficient time to carry into effect the wise designs of 
Rome. The history of Dr. Creagh's imprisonment is well 
known. Father Wolf shared his sufferings, being loaded 
with chains, and thrown into the dungeons of Dublin Cas- 
tle. On the 13th of March, 1568, a letter was despatched 
from Rome to the nuncio in Madrid, instructing him to 
employ all the papal influence at that court to procure, 
through the mediation of the Spanish monarch, the libera- 
tion of these two ecclesiastics, whose labors in the sacred 
cause of religion had already won for them the applause 
of the whole Christian world. 

" We have been informed," thus writes the sainted pon- 
tiff Pius V., " that our venerable brother the Archbishop of 
Armagh, who, as you are aware, is Primate of Ireland, has 
been arrested by the English, and cast into prison in the 
Tower of London ; and that our beloved son David, of the 
Society of Jesus, is also closely confined by the same Eng- 
lish in the city of Dublin, both of them being treated with 
the greatest severity. Their sufferings overwhelm us with 
affliction on account of their singular merits, and of their 
zeal for the Catholic faith. And as it is our desire and 
our duty to succor them as far as is in our power, we 
know of no other means for doing so than that our dear- 
est son, his Catholic majesty, should employ his authority 
with the English queen in their behalf. You, therefore, 
will use every endeavor with his majesty to this effect, and 
you will urge, and request, and solicit, in our name, his 
letters to his ambassador and to the queen, to obtain the 
liberation of these prisoners. Than which favor none 
other could be at present more acceptable to us. Given 
in Rome, at St. Peter's, under the seal of the Fisherman, 
this 13th day of March, 1568." 

The mediation of the Spanish court, however, was 
without effect ; and Father David was detained in the 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 37 

closest custody till 1572, when he happily made his es- 
cape from Dublin Castle, and, accompanied by Sir Rice 
Corbally and the son of James Fitzmaurice, took refuge in 
Spain. Sir Peter Carew, writing to the Privy Council in 
England, on the 6th of February, 1573, characteristically 
remarks, " James Fitzmaurice hath sent his son with one 
David Wolf, an arrant traitor, into Spain, to practise his 
old devices." He soon, however, returned to the former 
fields of his labors, and in 1575 we find him engaged once 
more in visiting and consoling the Catholics of Ireland. 
We shall conclude our notice of this indefatigable and holy 
man with the words of the author of Cambrensis Eversus : 
" I saw a dispensation granted by David Wolf, of Limerick, 
to Richard Lynch, a citizen of Galway, grandfather to Nicho- 
las Lynch, provincial of the Irish Dominicans, who died at 
Rome about twenty years ago, deeply regretted by his 
friends. The dispensation was signed David Wolf, Apos- 
tolic Nuncio."* Orlandini speaks of him in his History'of 
the Society of yesus : " I have learned that he was a man 
of extraordinary piety, who fearlessly denounced crime 
when ever it was committed. When the whole country 
was embroiled in war, he took refuge in the castle of Chu- 
noan,f on the borders of Thomond, and of the county of 
Galway ; but, when he heard that its occupants lived by 
plunder, he scrupled any nourishment from them, and soon 
after sickened and died." 

We have no precise record of the year in which he died, 
but it seems to have been in 1578, as no mention is made 
of him in the detailed correspondence of 1579 and the fol- 
lowing years, during the eventful period of the second 
Desmond war. The name David Wolf, sacerdos Hiber- 

* Nuncio. Perhaps when returning a second time to Ireland he received the title of nuncio ; 
it is probable, however, that he was only commissary. He was commonly styled nuncio, even 
on his first arrival, though he was certainly at that time only commissary apostolic. 

t Now Cluain Dubhain or Clonoan, an old castle close to the boundary of the county Gal- 
way, and not far from Rockvale, in the parish of Kilkeedy, barony of Inchiquin, county Clare. 



38 Martyrs and Confessors 

nus, occurs for the last time in a list transmitted by the 
Spanish nuncio to Rome, on the 3d of June, 1578 ; and from 
this list we learn that he was then living in Lisbon, sup- 
ported by the generous contributions of the Holy See. 



Anno 1569. 

DANIEL O'DUILLIAN, FRANCISCAN. 

This martyr's sufferings and triumph are related by 
Father Mooney, in his Provincicz Hibernics Descriptio, in 
the following words : j 

"In the year 1569, (if I be rightly informed as to the 
date,*) a certain brother Daniel O'Duillian, of the convent 
of Youghal, very bravely overcame the tormentor. For, 
when one Captain Dudal (probably Dowdall) with his 
troop were torturing him, by order of Lord Arthur Grey, 
the viceroy, first they took him to the gate which is called 
Trinity Gate, and tied his hands behind his back, and, 
having fastened heavy stones to his feet, thrice pulled him 
up with ropes from the earth to the top of the tower, and 
left him hanging there for a space. At length, after many 
insults and tortures, he was hung with his head down and 
his feet in the air, at the mill near the monastery ; and, 
hanging there a long time, while he lived he never utter- 
ed an impatient word, but, like a good Christian, inces- 
santly repeated prayers, now aloud, now in a low voice. 
At length the soldiers were ordered to shoot at him, as 
though he were a target ; but yet, that his sufferings might 
be the longer and more cruel, they might not aim at his 
head or heart, but as much as they pleased at any other 

* In this and many other instances there was a difficulty in ascertaining the exact date, the 
witnesses who narrated the events a few years afterward recollecting the circumstances well 
enough, but in the absence of all almanacs finding it difficult to state with precision the year. 
Thus, even as to such public and notorious events as the death of Archbishop O'Brien and 
the execution of Archbishop O' Hurley the year is differently stated by different writers. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 39 

part of his body. After he had received many balls, one, 
with a cruel mercy, loaded his gun with two balls and shot 
him through the heart. Thus did he receive the glorious 
crown of martyrdom, the 22d of April, in the year afore- 
said." — Mooney, p. 53. 

As this is the first recorded martyr of the host that the 
Order of Saint Francis has produced in Ireland, it may 
not be out of place to give here the well-deserved praise 
which Father Mooney bestows on his order, writing in the 
year 1624: 

" When Queen Elizabeth strove to make all in Ireland 
fall away from the Catholic faith, and a law was passed 
proscribing all the members of the religious orders, and 
giving their monasteries and possessions to the treasury, 
while all the others either took to flight, or at least quitted 
their monasteries, and, for safety sake, lived privately and 
singly among their friends, and receiving no novices, the 
Order of St. Francis alone ever remained, as it were, un- 
shaken. For, though they were violently driven out of some 
convents in the great towns, and the convents profanely 
turned into dwellings for seculars, and some of the fathers 
suffered violence and even death, yet in the country and 
other remote places they ever remained in the convents, 
celebrating the divine office according to the custom of 
religious, their preachers preaching to the people, and ful- 
filling their other functions, training up novices, and pre- 
serving the conventual buildings, holding it sinful to lay 
aside or even hide their religious habit, though for an hour, 
through any human fear. And every three years they held 
their regular provincial chapters,* and observed the rule as 
it is kept in provinces that are in peace." — Mooney, p. 2. 

• These chapters were generally held in woods, as Mooney relates, at the respective years. 



40 Martyrs and Confessots 

Anno 1570. 

DERMOD MULRONEY AND TWO OTHER FRANCISCANS.* 

Under the heading of " Convent of Gallvaise, Ahar- 
lagh,"f Mooney says : 

" This convent is situated in a small rural town of the 
diocese of Emly. I could hear nothing of its foundation 
or history ; but I found, in the year 1570, while Henry 
Sydney, who was then viceroy, was making excursions in 
those parts, three brothers suffered martyrdom in that con- 
vent. The names of two I could not learn ; the third was 
called Dermod O'Mulroney, a priest. He fled with his 
comrades from that rural monastery to the town of Clonmel 
to avoid the persecution, which was then vehement ; but 
when he had remained there some time he resolved to 
return to his monastery, God perchance so disposing it, 
that he might obtain the crown of martyrdom. When, 
therefore, they thought all was safe, he returned to the 
monastery and dwelt there ; but on a certain day the 
English soldiers suddenly came and surrounded the place, 
so that there was no way for the brethren to escape. The 
holy man mounted up into the bell-tower of the church 
with his two companions, that they might hide there, and 
drew up the portable ladder which was there. The soldiers 
made a fire to burn the church and tower ; then the holy 
man, that he might save the church, freely descended, and 
having let down the ladder, as he put his foot on the first 
step, signed himself with the sign of the cross, and repeat- 
ed the psalm, ' Have mercy on me, O Lord.' The soldiers, 
nothing softened, loaded him with blows and wounds, and 
at length struck off his head. Then a marvel was seen ; 



* From Mooney MS,, p. 54, and Roothe's A nalecta Mira et Nova, 2d part See also 
Wadding's Scriptores and A nnales. 

t Roothe calls it " Monastery of Gallbally, in the mountains of Aharlagh, near Tipperary." 
The town of Gallbally is in the county Tipperary, in the glen of Aharlow, at the foot of the Galtee 
Mountains. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 41 

for when his head was cut off no drop of blood flowed 
from his body, which the soldiers seeing, cut up his body 
in pieces, yet did not blood flow. Of the two others the 
memory of the place retained nothing but the fact of their 
death. This have I to tell of this convent, which is now 
wholly destroyed save the walls." — Mooney, p. 54. 



Anno 1576. 

THADDJEUS DALY, FRANCISCAN.* 



The following is the account of his martyrdom given by 
Father Mooney under the head " Convent of Roscrea :"f 

" The roof of the whole convent has fallen in, (this was 
in 1625,) yet the walls and windows, with some glass in 
them, yet remain. There still lives there one of the pro- 
fessed brothers. There were six conventuals there before 
the destruction, and some among them fell away ; but one 
of them, by name Thady Daly, fled to Limerick, and was 
there taken while he sought to escape beyond the seas ; and, 
constant in the confession of the faith, he rejected the offer 
of life and reward if he would join the heretics, choosing 
rather a glorious death ; and, thus ' perfected in a short 
time, he filled a long life/ but under whom, or in what 
year,$ I could not learn from that brother. This brother 
was the companion of this holy martyr both in his flight and 

his captivity, but he was (the word' is illegible in the 

MS.) and very simple, and when danger presented itself 
he abandoned his rule, and, having received some gifts, he 
deserted his order and obtained his temporal liberty, and, 
returning to his own part of the country, which was not 



• From Mooney, p. 55, and Wadding's Scriptores and Annales, vol. xxi, p. 64. 
t Roothe's Analecta mentions Father Daly under the year 1579, and says he came from the 
convent of Asketin ; but Mooney is clearly the better authority. 
X The Annals say on the 1st of January, about the year 1576. 



42 Martyrs and Confessors 

far distant from that convent, he then led a secular life 
until 1611. At that time I was vicar of the province, and 
preached the Lent in those parts ; and I frequently went 
to a place of devout pilgrimage about a mile distant from 
the convent, called the Island of Viretin, that as far as in 
me lay I might exhort to penance the people who flocked 
there in pilgrimage. On a certain day, this brother, who 
was then old, came to me, who knew him not even by 
sight, told me the whole history of his life, and humbly 
begged that I would again receive him into the bosom of 
the order. When on inquiry I found the matter to be as 
he said, being touched with pity for him, I appointed him 
a day to come to me ; and when he had dwelt with me 
some days, I sent him to a certain convent of our order, 
there to lead a penitential life. He yet lives, and I hope 
better than before." — Mooney, p. 55. 



Anno 1577. 

FATHER FERGAL WARD, FRANCISCAN/ 



Dr. Moran thus relates his martyrdom : 

''While Drury was lord-deputy, about 1577, Fergal 
Ward, a Franciscan, and a native of Donegal, was put to 
death in Armagh. He was venerated by the people for 
the simplicity of his life and his zeal for the salvation of 
souls. He travelled at intervals throughout the whole 
province of Armagh, visiting the scattered families who, in 
the mountainous districts, lived without the comforts of the 
holy sacrifice or the strengthening grace of the sacraments. 
On one of these excursions he fell into the hands of the 



* From Dr. Moran's History of the A rckbishops of Dublin, Introduction, p. 141, where he 
quotes Synop. Prov. Franciscan, in Hib., p. 66. The same account is given by Bruodin, lib. 
iii. cap. 20, where he refers to John Good's work. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 43 

soldiery, and, being scourged with great barbarity, was 
hanged from the branches of a tree with the cincture of 
his own religious habit." 



FATHER O'DOWD, FRANCISCAN * 

Father Mooney did not know the name of this martyr, 
which, however, we learn from other authorities ; but I 
give his account as the fullest and most authentic, as it 
was derived from the actors in the tragedy. He also states 
it to have taken place in the convent of Elphin, in the 
episcopal city of Elphin, while others lay the scene in the 
convent of Moyne,, in the county of Mayo. Clearly the 
English soldiers who assisted at the massacre and narrat- 
ed it to Father Mooney knew little of the name of the 
place where it occurred or of the priest whom they saw 
slain ; but they are the very best authorities as to the fact 
having taken place. 

Father Mooney thus narrates the event : 

" In this same convent, on another time, certain English 
soldiers! seized a certain priest of our order and some oth- 
er prisoners. They pressed a certain secular, who was 
one of their captives, to tell them something of the plots 
which they said he had made with others against the 
Queen of England ; but he protested he could tell 
nothing but the truth, and that there were no plots ; so 
they determined to hang him. When they said this, he 
begged he might be allowed to make his confession to 
the brother ; this they granted the more readily that 
they thought the priest, if he were tortured, would reveal 
what might be told him. As soon as the confession was 



* From Dr. Moran, who quotas Synop. Prov. Franciscan, in Hib. t and Mooney, p. 35. 
The name we learn from the former, and also the date, 
t They were the soldiers of Filton, then President of Connaught. 



44 Martyrs and Confessors 

over, the secular was hung ; and then they asked the 
priest, who was also to be hung, if he had learned aught of 
the business in confession. He answered in the negative, 
and, refusing to reveal anything of a confession, they offer- 
ed him life and freedom if he would reveal, and threatened 
torture if he refused. He answered he could not, and they 
immediately knotted a cord* round his forehead, and, 
thrusting a piece of wood through it, slowly twisted it so 
tightly that at length, after enduring this torment for a 
long time, his skull was broken in, and, the brain being 
crushed, he died.f I have seen and examined ocular wit- 
nesses of this fact, who were serving in that body of Eng- 
lish troops, and sought absolution from me ; but they did 
not remember the name of the brother or the exact year ; 
but it was about 1577." — Mooney, p. 35. 



Anno 1577. 

RIGHT REV. THOMAS LEVEROUS, OR LEARY, BISHOP OF 

KILDARE. 

I give his life, translated from the work of Dr. Roothe, 
Bishop of Ossory. 

" The memory of those deserves to be preserved who 
have left to posterity an example of fidelity to God and 
man worthy both of honor and of imitation. Such was the 
Right Rev. Thomas Leverous, J who was born in a village 
of the county Kildare, of a family bound by old ties of 
clientship to the illustrious family of Kildare in the same 
county. 

" In the reign of Henry VIII., when schism was already 
impending over England, Gerald Fitzgerald, Earl of Kil- 

* Others say the cord of his habit. t On the 9th of June. 

X Leurusius is the name as given in Latin, which is translated Leverous. 



In the Reig7i of Elizabeth. 45 

dare and Viceroy of Ireland, was summoned to England at 
the instigation of his enemies and by the advice of Cardi- 
nal Wolsey, who was then all-powerful and not at all favor- 
able to the Geraldines. The earl was accused of being 
unfaithful to the king, and of having in his office of vice- 
roy connived at rebels and disturbers. He was thrown 
into prison, and the news inflamed the youthful mind of 
his eldest son, Thomas Geraldine, who had been left by his 
father to exercise his power in his absence. When he re- 
ceived the news of his father's arrest, he handed back the 
sword of state to the chancellor and privy council, and, 
with courage worthy of a man, but the folly of a child, took 
up arms against the king, (a.d. 1534.) But this furious 
outburst was soon quelled with the death of its author and 
five of his uncles, the only one of the family who was saved 
being Gerald Geraldine, the youngest son, who was hidden 
by a faithful nurse from the rage of his enemies.* But as 
it was said that this escape was favored by Leonard, Lord 
Gray, he afterward paid the penalty of this connivance 
with his head. But how could so young a boy take to 
flight, or, if he did, how could he effect it successfully, at so 
young an age and surrounded by so many dangers ? Nor 
could any common man give a shelter to a youth of so no- 
ble a race without it being remarked. But the affection- 
ate care of his nurse shone forth in this emergency, and 
she had as a partner in her trouble, and the guide of her 
flight, the Thomas Leverous of whom I now write. 

" He was as a father to the youth while he grew up, and 
by constant flight eluded the snares of his enemies ; and a 
guide and counsellor when he grew up and travelled in for- 
eign lands. When he was named to the bishopric of Kil- 



* Our author is here inaccurate. Gerald and Edward were the two sons of Earl Gerald, by 
his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Gray. Edward, the youngest, was conveyed to his mother in 
England ; Gerald, the elder, aged about thirteen, found an asylum in Thomond. See Haver- 
ty's Ireland, p. 361. 



\6 Martyrs and Confessors 

dare, he lost nothing of his humility, gentleness of mind, 
piety, and Christian charity ; yea, rather, his lowliness of 
spirit and contempt of worldly honors and riches increased 
as he was elevated in dignity and wealth. 

" When, after the death of Henry VIII. and Edward VL, 
Queen Mary, the daughter of the former and sister of the 
latter, restored the exiled Gerald to his rank and title, his 
faithful friend and guardian, Thomas Leverous, was estab- 
lished in the bishopric of Kildare.* 

" That diocese is ample and honorable, the land thereof is 
rich, the inhabitants numerous, and embrace many noble 
families ; but of these by far the most numerous and most 
honorable is that of the Geraldines. His bishopric 
Thomas enjoyed during the reign of Queen Mary, but at 
her death, when her sister Elizabeth succeeded to the crown 
by the will of her father, she gave instructions to the vice- 
roy, the Earl of Sussex, to tender the oath of the queen's 
ecclesiastical supremacy to the bishops of Ireland, and to 
drive from their sees whoever should refuse to take it. 

" When Bishop Leverous was summoned by Sussex to 
take the oath, and he refused to take it, as being against his 
conscience, the earl asked him for what reason he denied 
that the queen was the head of the church, since so many 
illustrious men, and so many doctors and bishops, both in. 
England and Ireland, had acknowledged her as such. But 
he gave for answer only such a simple reason as any com- 
mon man might understand, namely, that all true ecclesi- 
astical jurisdiction must come from Christ our Lord ; and, 
since he had not given even the smallest share of ecclesi- 
astical power to his Mother, so glorious and so dear, so 
adorned with virtues and honors, how much less could 
such supreme jurisdiction be given to any one of the same 
sex ! St. Paul would not allow any woman even to speak 

* " He succeeded by provision of Queen Mary, March 1st, 1554, but was not confirmed by 
the pope's bull till the 3d of August, 1555."— Ware's Antiquities : Bishops of Kildarc. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 47 

in church : how much more are all excluded from judging, 
ruling, and presiding ! St. John Chrysostom well express- 
ed the mind of our Lord (lib. ii., De Sacerdotio) when he 
thus spoke of all persons of that weaker sex : ' When the 
question is of the headship of the church, and of entrusting 
to one the care of so many souls, the whole feminine sex 
must, by its nature, be excluded from a task of such 
weight.' So also Tertullian : ' It is not permitted to a 
woman to speak in the church, nor to teach, nor to offer, 
nor to claim a share in such offices reserved to men, 
much less in that of the priesthood.' 

" And were it not that they are unfitted by nature and 
the condition of their sex from such exercise of authority, 
he who on earth raised his Mother to a dignity above all 
others, and above all women, and in heaven has placed 
her on a throne next to himself, would not have lowered 
her by refusing her an honor fitted to her sex, and which 
others of that sex might enjoy. But since by nature it was 
not fitting that women should share in it, it was no dis- 
honor to his Mother not to participate in the jurisdiction 
which her Son conferred. Hence it followed that Eliza- 
beth could not lawfully take, nor her father Henry give, 
nor any parliament bestow on women that authority which 
Christ gave, and which was, as the Scripture says, 'a 
fountain sealed up ' to those men to whom he assigned it 
who bears on his shoulder the key of the house of David, 
and who gave to Peter his keys, by which the gate of hea- 
ven is shut and opened. 

"The answer of the bishop pleased not the viceroy, who 
drove him from his bishopric as unworthy of the honor 
who thus dishonored his queen ; yet he, with a sincere 
mind, sought not to deprive her of any just honor, but only 
refused her an unlawful title and a vain figment of honor 
devised by flatterers, and which became not her head, 
adorned with an earthly crown. 



43 Martyrs and Confessors 

" Driven thus from his cathedral see, and deprived of its 
revenues, humble and poor like Christ, he sought a strange 
and distant shelter in a distant district, rejoicing to suffer 
contumely for the name of Christ. As he had answered 
the viceroy when he threatened him with deprivation of all 
his goods and expulsion from his see unless he bowed him 
to the queen's will, ' What,' said he, ' will it avail a man 
to gain the whole world and lose his own soul.?' Thus he 
esteemed all things as dirt that he might gain Christ. O 
generous champion of Christ ! who to prepare for the fight 
threw away all burdens, great was thy faith, great thy zeal 
for the faith, and great the reward laid up for thee in 
heaven ! Thus was this aged man, of venerable appear- 
ance, unfitted for any business save the care of souls and 
the upholding of ecclesiastical discipline, compelled to turn 
his aged limbs to tasks fitted only for the youthful — the 
labors of a toilsome journey and a distant flight. When 
he was young, he went into voluntary exile for the sake of 
another ; now, aged, he was compelled to seek his own liv- 
ing in exile. But he could console himself with the wise 
words of the great St. Leo (Serm. 9, De Quad.) : ' As it is 
the occupation of the whole body to live piously, so it is 
the occupation of all time to bear the cross." No age, no 
time, no place, no state in this our mortal life, can insure 
the servants of Christ from bearing the cross ; and there 
is often more danger from a concealed adversary than from 
an open enemy. 

" In order, therefore, that he might secure his own safety, 
and be of service also to others, he went to Gerald, Earl 
of Desmond, and the Countess Joan, his wife, and the mo- 
ther of Thomas Butler, Earl of Ormond, a wise and pru- 
dent heroine ; and, being hospitably received by them, he 
kept himself with all prudence and peacefulness, lest he 
should bring any trouble on those wljo sheltered him. 

" By his assiduity in his sacred ministry, he abundantly 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 49 

compensated the generosity of his host, and his piety, 
modesty, sobriety of life, and fervor in promoting the di- 
vine honor made him acceptable to the neighboring nobles 
and the inhabitants, among whom he sedulously labored 
to preserve them from the novelties of heresy. He was 
constant in admonishing and exhorting in all fitting time 
and place, and performing the work of a bishop ; and la- 
bored like a simple priest in administering the sacra- 
ments, and found such labors sweeter than honey and the 
honeycomb. 

" When, however, prudence required him to abstain from 
these exercises in places where he was well known or 
which were near his ordinary residence, his charity could 
not endure to be idle, but he cheerfully removed to more 
remote districts, and, like the busy bee, ever sought new 
fields of work. 

" He travelled through various districts, instructing all, 
both old and young, with the same zeal, with teachings 
adapted to the age and intelligence of each ; and the vene- 
rable bishop, in these labors, never thought of his rank or 
age, and even taught boys, like a common pedagogue, not 
only the elements of rhetoric and grammar, but even to 
read ; and this not only in country villages, as in the village 
of Adare, in the territory of Connaught, but in municipal 
towns and noted places, as in Limerick, where he opened 
a school, and had for teacher under him Richard Creagh, 
then young, but who was afterward Archbishop of Armagh 
and Primate, of whom we have written more at length in 
the beginning of these notes. 

" How noble a school, in which the teachers were so dis- 
tinguished ! how well cultivated the field, in which the labor- 
ers were so skilled ! how fruitful the seminary, planted by 
such noble founders ! how glorious the lecture-hall, in 
which such great doctors taught ! Would that I might 
enter that school to hear you, Leverous and Creagh, teach- 



50 Martyrs and Confessors 

ing even the rudiments of philology to the tender minds of 
youth, as a preparation for the higher mysteries of the 
faith, and forming their souls at once in learning and vir- 
tue ! I may well address you in the words which St. Au- 
gustine uses of Saints Peter and Andrew when called by 
our Lord : ' Leaving their fishing, they adhered to him, or 
if they left him for a time, to return again they did as is 
written : " Let thy foot wear the doorstep of his house ; 
arise and come to him assiduously and learn his precepts." 
He showed them where he dwelt, and they came and 
dwelt with him. What a happy day and night did they 
pass ! Who may tell us what they heard from Christ ? 
Let us also build up in our hearts a dwelling for him, that 
he may come and teach us and dwell with us.' 

" Our Lord taught Peter and Andrew, and they taught the 
world : the same Lord taught Richard and Thomas, and 
they, by their teaching, made wise unto salvation the little 
world of Ireland. From their school came forth worthy 
disciples, zealous laborers, who gathered an abundant har- 
vest into the granary of the Lord : the one labored in the 
north, the other in the south. Were there no other monu- 
ment of their piety, their labors in teaching youth were 
deserving of commemoration. Well hath Plutarch said : 
* As the limbs of new-born children should be laid straight, 
that they may so grow up, so also their minds should be 
trained to virtue ; for that early age is easily moulded, 
and discipline is better implanted in their minds, which are 
yet impressionable, while when age has hardened them 
they are more difficult to change.' What I before said of 
his colleague* is yet more applicable to Leverous, who the 
more deserves our admiration in that he was a bishop when 
he thus devoted himself to the labor of teaching youth. 
Thus did he ever strive to preserve the faith in his country 

• " His colleague," Dr. Creagh, whose life comes before that of Dr. Leverous in Roothe. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 5 1 

and hand it over to posterity, and after having thus labor- 
ed to the end, he went to receive at the hand of his Lord 
and God the crown he had earned by his labors. He died 
at the age of eighty, and was buried in the town of Naas,* 
which, after the cathedral city, is the principal town in the 
diocese of Kildare. The towns-people unanimously assert 
that he has been honored by miracles. He died about the 
year 1 5 77." — Roothe, De Processu Martyriali. 



REV. THOMAS COURCY. 

" He was from Munster, a most zealous priest, and Vi- 
car-General of Kinsale. When visiting, as was his office, 
his parish priests, and admonishing them to be diligent in 
guarding the flocks committed to their care, he fell into 
the jaws of that cruel tyrant, Sir John Perrot, then Presi- 
dent of Munster, by whose order he was hung. And thus 
he obtained of Christ the victory, on the 30th March, 1577" 
— Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



Anno 1578. 

RIGHT REV. PATRICK O'HELY, BISHOP OF MAYO, AND HIS 
COMPANION, REV. CORNELIUS O'RORKE, FRANCISCANS.t 

Again, by the kind permission of Doctor Moran, I copy 
his excellent account of this holy martyr. 

" Dr. Patrick O'Hely, the last Bishop of Mayo,$ was a 
native of Connaught, and from his youth was adorned with 
every virtue. Having embraced the religious order of 



* In the parish church of St. David. — Ware's Antiquities. 

t From Dr. Moran, p. 139 The original authorities are : O'Sullivan, p. 90 ; Roothe's Anet- 
lecta, p. 63 ; Dom. a Rosario, p. 140 ; Mooney, pp. 9 and 54 ; Theatre of Prot, p. 50 ; Bruo- 
din, p. 437 ; Arthur a Monasterio in Martyrolog. Francis. See also Renehan, Collec. p. 389. 

% Mooney, p. 9. 



52 Martyrs and Confessors 

Saint Francis, he proceeded to Spain, and pursued his sa- 
cred studies with great applause in the University of Alcala. 
In obedience to the minister-general of his order, he repair- 
ed to Rome in 1575, and, having resided for some time in 
the convent of Ara Cceli in that city, he was proposed for 
the vacant see of Mayo, in the consistory of 4th July, the 
same year.* Returning to Ireland, he was accompanied by 
Cornelius O'Rorke, a Franciscan priest, who, though the 
eldest son of the Prince of Breffny, had abandoned all the 
pleasures of the world to embrace a life of prayer and pov- 
erty. They encountered many difficulties on their journey, 
but at length safely landed in Dingle, in the county Kerry. 
The heretical spies whom Drury, the lord-deputy, kept 
at this time stationed along the southern coast of Ireland, 
soon recognized the venerable strangers. They were, 
therefore, almost immediately on landing, arrested and 
transmitted to Limerick, to be examined by Goulden, the 
military commander of that district. By his orders the 
prelate and his chaplain were loaded with chains and cast 
into the public prison. Here they remained for some 
months, till the arrival of Sir William Drury in Kilmallock, 
before whom they were conducted, in the month of Au- 
gust, 1578. 

" On being examined, Patrick O'Hely confessed that they 
belonged to the Franciscan order, that he himself was 
Bishop of Mayo, sent by Gregory XIII. to guide and in- 
struct his spiritual flock ; this, he added, was the object of 
his mission, and the only motive of his return to Ireland. 
' And do you dare,' asked Drury, ' to defend the au- 
thority of the pope against the laws of the queen and 
Parliament ?' ' I repeat what I have said/ replied the 
bishop, r and I am ready, if necessary, to die for that sa- 
cred truth.' Father O'Rorke replied in the same strain. 

* Ex Act Consist. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 53 

Threats and promises were unavailing to change their 
resolution ; and they both joyfully received sentence to be 
first put to the torture, and then to be hanged in the pre- 
sence of the garrison. 

" These orders of Drury were executed with an uncommon 
degree of barbarity. The two prisoners were first placed 
on the rack, their arms and feet were beaten with hammers, 
so that their thigh-bones were broken,* and sharp iron 
points and needles were cruelly thrust under their nails, 
which caused an extreme agony of suffering. For a con- 
siderable time they were subjected to these tortures, which 
the holy confessors bore patiently for the love of Christ, 
mutually exhorting each other to constancy and perse- 
verance. 

" At length they were taken from the rack, and hanged 
from the branches of a neighboring tree. Their bodies 
were left suspended there for fourteen days, and were used 
in the interim as a target by the brutal soldiery. When 
the martyr-prelate was being hurried to execution, he turn- 
ed to Drury and warned him that before many days he 
himself should appear before the tribunal of God to answer 
for his crimes. On the fourteenth day after, this unhappy 
man expired in great agony at Waterford, of a distemper 
that baffled every remedy, f The 22d of August, 1578, 
was the day rendered illustrious by their martyrdom. By 
the care of the Earl of Desmond, their bodies were reve- 
rently laid in the Franciscan convent at Clonmel, whence, 
seventy years afterward, (in 1647,) they were translated 
with solemnity, and deposited, together with the imple- 
ments of their torture, in the convent of Askeaton." 



* Domin. a Rosario. 

t Besides the authorities quoted by Dr. Moran, this fact is mentioned in the ancient MS in 
ths Burgundian Library, which is entitled Magna SuJ>plicia, etc MS. No. 2159. 



54 Martyrs and Confessors 

RIGHT REV. MAURICE GIBBON OR FfTZGIBBON, ARCH- 
BISHOP OF CASHEL * 

About this year Dr. Gibbon, Archbishop of Cashel, who 
had been forcibly driven into exile, died in the city of 
Oporto. He is enumerated by Dr. Roothe among those 
who suffered death or imprisonment for the faith. I have 
not met with any other record of his imprisonment save in 
Bruodin, who says he died in prison in Cork, 6th May, 
1578. — See also McCarthy Collections. 



Anno 1578. 

RIGHT REV. EDMUND TANNER, BISHOP OF CORK. 

a He was a native of Cork, and for many years a mem- 
ber of the Society of Jesus, and noted for his virtues ; at 
length he was obliged, by illness, to leave the society, with 
the good will of the fathers. He was soon after appointed 
Bishop of Cork,f but had hardly taken on him the burden 
of the episcopate, when he was arrested for having opposed 
the queen's supremacy, and carried to Dublin. In prison 
he was tortured in divers ways, and was more than once 
hung up for two hours by his hands, tied together behind 
his back. Broken with these and other sufferings, after an 
imprisonment of eighteen months, he went to receive his 
reward, the 4th of June, 1578." — Bruodin, lib. hi. cap. xx. 



PHELIM O'HARA, FRANCISCAN.* 

Father Mooney is our authority for this narrative. 

" In the year 1578, the English heretics made an expedi- 

* From Roothe's Analecta Nova et Mira, 2d part. 

f Dr. Tanner was appointed bishop on the nones of November, 1574. He was a native of 
Leinster, and we find faculties granted to him, not only for his own diocese, but also for the 
provinces of Cashel and Dublin. His successor, Dermitius Graith, was appointed on the nth 
October, 1580. — Moran ex Archiv. Vatican in Archbishops of Dublin, vol. i. p. 187. 

% Mooney, p. a. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 5 5 

tion to this convent, (that of Elphin, in the city of the same 
name,) and when the brethren learned their approach they 
fled across the sea in a boat which was there. The father 
provincial minister was there at the time, and when he 
asked who, for the merit of holy obedience, would remain 
alone in the monastery, Brother Phelim O'Hara, a lay 
brother, was chosen out of many who offered themselves, 
partly because he was prudent and far advanced in years, 
and partly because it was hoped he would be less obnoxious 
than the others.* Wherefore he received the benediction 
and remained. But the English, coming, despoiled the 
monastery and slew this brother, even before the high 
altar ; nor did they dare to remain there long, but departed 
the same day. The other brethren who had fled, and who 
remained out at sea waiting, when they returned home 
found the brother, who had become a martyr through 
obedience, before the high altar, where it was believed he 
was praying when, on the approach of the enemies, he 
gave up his soul a grateful sacrifice to God. He is buried 
in the chapter house." 

Wadding adds : " The soldiers returning another time 
seized a secular priest and another Minorite friar, and having 
hung the former, tortured the latter, to make him reveal 
what the priest had said in confession, by tightening a 
cord round his forehead till the skull cracked and the brain 
protruded." He also, Annals, ad an. 1578, mistakes the 
convent of Moy for that of Elphin. 

REV. JOHN O'LOCHRAN, EDMUND SIMMONS, AND DONAT 
O'RORKE, FRANCISCANS.t 

These fathers were members of the Franciscan convent 
of Down. A military commissioner, named Britton, and 

* Because the others were priests. 

t From Bruodin, Passio Martyr. 44c ; and L. Wadding, Scriptores and A nncdes, vol. XX. 
p. 258, and who puts their martyrdom about 1570 ; but Bruodin gives the exact date. 



56 Martyrs and Confessors 

his ravaging band, resolved to fix their winter quarters in 
that ancient town. Their thirst for religious spoils soon 
impelled them to the convent. But the sacred vessels had 
been concealed, and none could be found. The three 
fathers were their only prey. These they first subjected to 
a variety of tortures, and then, dragging them to the 
adjoining garden, strangled them from the branches of a 
large oak that overshadowed the sanctuary. 



Anno 1579. 

RIGHT REV. THOMAS O'HERLAGHY, BISHOP OF ROSS. 

I give his life in full from Dr. Roothe. 

" After collecting as best I could any information in my 
power about Archbishop O'Hurley, it now remains for me 
to relate what befell a suffragan of his see, Thomas O'Her- 
laghy. The diocese of Ross is situated in the south part 
of Munster ; the cathedral is in a town neither large nor 
fortified, in the district of Carbary, and from its name of 
Ross the bishopric derives its title. Thomas, of whom I 
write, was a man of most exemplary piety, born of a hum- 
ble family in a small village of that territory, and when he 
was raised to the episcopal dignity he was unwearying in 
the care of his flock, and preserving them in the Catholic 
faith. Together with two other Irish bishops, Donald 
Magongial, Bishop of Raphoe, and Eugene O'Hairt, Bishop 
of Aghadoe, he took a part in the Council of Trent, and he 
therefore strove with peculiar zeal to have the decrees and 
discipline of the council observed throughout the whole 
district under his jurisdiction. This caused him many 
troubles, and raised a great persecution against him, which 
compelled him to take refuge in a small island to escape, 
like a bird from the claws of a hawk ; and, like another 
Ulysses in Ithaca, he there led a solitary life with one 



In the Reign of Elizabeth 57 

chaplain, intent on prayer and meditation ; yet he was not 
long safe from the pursuer. They were both taken prison- 
ers by one from whom they looked not for such treatment, 
a noble of their own nation, one O' Sullivan, the eldest son 
of the great O'Sullivan,* a spoiler the more unfortunate the 
greater his spoil ; for, like the Tolosan gold or the horse 
of Sejan, it prospered him not, but from that day he fell 
into many misfortunes, hated by the strangers, and detest- 
ed by the natives and his former friends. He took his cap- 
tives to Sir John Perrot, an English Protestant, who was 
then President of Munster ; by him the bishop was cast 
into chains, a chain being fastened round his neck, and fet- 
ters on his legs, and after he had suffered much torment 
and misery in Ireland he was sent to England. 

" The night previous to his being taken before the pre- 
sident he took care to have his episcopal tonsure shaved, 
in token of Catholic union and the faith which he profess- 
ed, for he did not blush to confess Him before men from 
whom he hoped to receive the reward of his confession, the 
prize of victory, and the crown of immortality ; but this 
tonsure, detested by them, drew upon him the scorn and 
insolent scoffs of the soldiers, his jailers. When taken to 
England, he was thrown into the Tower of London, where 
he was kept for three years and about seven months with 
the primate, Archbishop Creagh. At first he was shut up 
in a dark cell, without bed, fire, or light, having only one 
small window, which was open to the northern blasts, 
which froze his aged limbs. 

" Freedom and honors were offered to him if he would 
yield to the queen's will ; but he would not. Many per- 
sons were sent to persuade him, by threats and fair words, 
to apostatize, but he adhered firmly to the rock on which 
he had taken his stand. They brought him in writing a 

* Filio majore majoris O'Sullivan. 



58 Martyrs and Confessors 

form of abjuration to sign, in which were contained many 
errors against the faith ; but he firmly refused to admit, 
either by word or writing, anything contrary to the ortho- 
dox faith, and declared he would rather his hand were cut 
off than that it should sign such a paper ; that he valued 
the deposit of the faith more than to renounce it for any 
human threats. In this he imitated Eusebius, the Bishop 
of Vercelli, who, when the Arian emperor called upon him 
to give up the declaration of Catholic faith which the or- 
thodox bishops had entrusted to him for safe-keeping, and 
threatened that his right hand should be cut off, boldly an- 
swered, ' Behold both my hands ; rather shall they both be, 
struck off than I will basely resign that which has been 
entrusted to me.' 

" At length the innocent bishop was freed from prison, 
at the solicitation of certain English nobles, and on Cor- 
mac Dermicia,* of the house of Carter, Lord of Muskerry, 
in Ireland, becoming bail for his innocence and purity of 
life. On leaving prison, he determined to cross over into 
Belgium, but, being seized with an illness, the seeds of 
which he had contracted in prison, he changed his mind, 
and betook himself to Ireland. On landing at the port of 
Dublin, he was seized and brought before the viceroy, who 
was about again to cast him into prison, and did detain 
him until he learned by letter from the Governor of the 
Tower of London that it was by the command of the queen 
and council he was set free. 

" He was now advanced in years, of grave manners, of 
frugal and temperate habits, contented with the simplest 
food, much given to meditation and prayer. He generally 
recited the canonical office of matins in the middle of the 
night, and that with bare head, and mostly on bended 
knees. He practised frequent fasts, and frequently, remov- 

* So written in the original : it is probably a translation of Dermody, as Dermiciada, later, 
is a classic form of the same patronymic. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 59 

ing the bed, he lay undressed on the hard floor ; and every 
year, at the close of the Lenten fast, he remained without 
eating from his sober midday meal on Holy Thursday un- 
til afternoon of Holy Saturday. 

" Although he suffered from dropsy, and was of so weak 
health that he seemed to need all possible quiet and repose 
to restore his strength, yet in his whole life he seemed 
hardly ever to rest from his labors ; for he was ever en- 
gaged either in the administration of the sacraments or of 
his episcopal jurisdiction and preaching, or in private pray- 
er and chastising his flesh. He heard the confessions of 
the people, and even of the poorest, in wretched hovels 
often covered with mud ; he often administered confirma- 
tion to the crowds who pressed to receive it until he was 
exhausted ; he conferred holy orders on those who were 
chosen ; he blessed the sacred vessels and the holy oils, 
and labored in every way possible for a prudent and zeal- 
ous bishop devoted to the salvation of souls. 

" He loved not high-sounding discourses, but rejoiced in 
the humble ; nor did he prefer his own opinion to that of 
others. He was gentle in discourse, and liberal in giving 
to the poor of the little he received from friends and bene- 
factors, for he never received one farthing of the revenues 
of his see, which an intruder held. He avoided all famili- 
arity with women, nor would he ever speak with them save 
before witnesses. He was a lover of solitude and silence, 
and even when sitting at the table of seculars he frequent- 
ly led the conversation to spiritual subjects, taking occa- 
sion from passing events to rise to spiritual thoughts, and 
to excite the minds of his hearers to heavenly desires. 

" When he left the Tower of London, and proceeded, in 
company with his bailsman, Cormac Dermiciada, to Ire- 
land, he resided at first in Muskerry, the territory of that 
lord ; but because he was there, on account of his host, 
obliged to assist at feasts and banquetings, which little 



60 Martyrs and Confessors 

suited his taste, he determined to seek another abode, 
where he might more freely indulge his pious tastes. He 
therefore hired a little farm, near a dense wood, in the 
same territory ; there he constructed a dwelling of boughs 
and twigs, with a roof of sods and straw, and the walls 
plastered with mud, against the cold. The house was the 
dwelling of a husbandman, and so were the furniture and 
cooking utensils ; no hangings or table napery, no silken 
coverlets or sumptuous couches ; a single sheet on straw, 
and a thick frieze coverlet, sufficed him ; wooden cups, and 
a plank on wooden props for his table. His drink was wa- 
ter from the spring, or a little weak beer, or whey ; hun- 
ger was his only sauce, labor the softener of his couch, a 
contented mind the solace of all his trials. 

" In this position of rural poverty he yet found means to 
relieve the poverty and wants of others. The war in the 
south was over, and the country was overrun with crowds 
of famishing wretches ; for the violence of war and the 
passage of plundering bands of soldiers had destroyed all 
cultivation, and the wretched farmers, not able to bear the 
incessant plundering, had abandoned their fields and their 
cottages, and wandered about, seeking a precarious life by 
begging. Many of these came to the bishop, to whom he 
gave freely of his little means. 

" This his humble dwelling he preferred to more splendid 
mansions ; there did he 'place steps in his heart in the vale 
of tears, in the place he had chosen.' From thence he pro- 
ceeded on his annual visitation of his diocese ; there he re- 
turned when he had completed the circuit of his jurisdic- 
tion ; there he meditated day and night on the law of the 
Lord. Thus, while the usurper, who had been placed by 
the favor of Elizabeth in the see of Ross, occupied his 
cathedral, the legitimate pastor was not only driven from* 
his country, but made captive, and fettered and sent out 
of the kingdom by Perrot, the president, and returned at 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 6 1 

length with difficulty to take care of his flock, who were 
dispersed ; for, like Moses, 'he denied himself to be the son 
of the daughter of Pharaoh, choosing rather to be afflicted 
with the people of God than to have the pleasure of sin for 
a time, esteeming the reproach of Christ greater riches 
than the treasure of the Egyptians.' He crossed the sea 
and fled into the desert from the Egypt of England, and 
dwelt in solitude and in desert places ; there he held his 
synods and administered the sacraments, and, far from the 
noise of the world, gave himself wholly to God. On the 
more solemn feasts he went to the neighboring church, 
celebrated there the holy mysteries, and preached to the 
people. To this his dwelling may be applied what is said 
in Deuteronomy of the land of promise, ' The land to which 
you shall come is not as the land of Egypt that you came 
out of, where when the seed is sown it is watered as in a 
garden ; but it is a land hilly and wooded, expecting rain 
from heaven, which the Lord thy God will send, and his 
eyes are upon it from the beginning of the year to the 
end.' From this land of the dying he sighed after the land 
of the living, where the sun burneth not nor the cold freez- 
es. In the midst of his labors and his sufferings from 
dropsy, his soul panted for the courts of the Lord, and, 
seated by the waters of Babylon, he was refreshed with the 
thoughts of Sion, and, though her harps hung silent on the 
willows because of the violence of the Babylonians, his 
voice did not cease from her canticles ; the beads of the 
rosary were ever passing through his fingers, or he was re- 
peating the Psalter. 

" Such was his conversation, pious and edifying, whether 
at home or abroad ; and, whether at home or abroad, he 
was ever employed in his Lord's service, for the venerable 
bishop labored much to bring back many who had wander- 
ed from the faith, to confirm those who were wavering, to 
inflame the tepid and strengthen the weak ; and it was 



62 Martyrs and Confessors 

granted to him to drive out Satan, not only from the mind, 
but also from the body. There was a certain damsel who 
was possessed by a dumb devil, and she was grievously 
tormented ; her voice trembled, her teeth chattered, her 
heart palpitated, and the shivering of all her limbs showed 
the power of the malignant spirit. The holy bishop, being 
taken to see her, exorcised the evil spirit, made the damsel 
repeat the Apostles' Creed, (which she did with great 
difficulty,) and, having heard her confession and prepared 
her by careful instruction, administered to her the holy 
communion ; and from that time she recovered not only 
her spiritual health, but gradually also the health of the 
body. 

" The holy Bishop O'Herlaghy continued unwearied in 
his apostolic labors up to his sixtieth year, and died in the 
territory of Muskerry, and was buried in the monastery of 
the Franciscan order, in Kilchree, (de Cellacrea,) in the 
year 1579." — De Processu Marty riali, etc. t T. N. Pkila- 
delpho, 1 6 19. 



Anno 1580. 

This year was peculiarly fruitful in martyrs. 

RIGHT REV. HUGH LUKE OR LACY, BISHOP OF LIMERICK. 

" Hugh de Lacy, of a noble Munster family, was a man 
well versed in sacred and profane learning, and a priest 
of most exemplary life, for which reason he was created 
Bishop of Limerick while Henry VIII. was yet a Catho- 
lic. When the king apostatized, he never could induce 
Hugh to join in his spiritual revolt, or to stain himself by 
subscribing to the king's supremacy ; for which reason he 
was deprived not only of the king's favor, but of all the 
revenues and of the possession of his see. As nothing 
was gained by this, the king had Lacy thrown into prison 



lit the Reign of Elizabeth. 63 

in Cork, where he nearly perished from the filth of the 
dungeon. He was freed by the dexterity of his friends, 
and returned to Limerick to collect his flock, which he 
found scattered by the Anglican wolf. But the persecu- 
tion increased in the latter years of Henry, and still more 
under the Calvinistic Edward VI., and Hugh was again 
threatened ; wherefore, imitating the example of the 
apostle, he sought safety in Catholic France. On the 
accession of Mary he was recalled by Cardinal Pole, and 
returned to Limerick amid the rejoicings of his flock, and 
for many years fed his flock in peace, with zeal and vigilance 
walking in the footsteps of the great Pastor. When he 
was more than sixty years of age, and Elizabeth was laying 
waste the Lord's vineyard, the venerable bishop was 
deprived of his episcopal see, and of all means of living, 
and thrown into prison for refusing the oath of the queen's 
supremacy, where, worn out with suffering, the noble- 
hearted bishop died, the 26th March, anno 1571."* — 
Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



REV. LAURENCE MOORE, PRIEST. 

"Father Moore, together with Oliver Plunket, an 
Irishman of gentle birth, and William Walsh, an English 
soldier, were seized by a troop of heretical soldiers, tied to 
stakes, and shot, and thus obtained the palm of martyrdom, 
on the eleventh of November, the feast of St. Martin, 
1 5 80." — Philadelphus. 

A letter, written on the 9th January, 1581, in the 

* Here, as in many other instances, Bruodin, although right in the substance of his narra- 
tive, is wrong in his dates. Dr. Roothe puts his imprisonment and death at 1580, and he is con- 
firmed by the Vatican list given by Dr. Moran, which describes the see of Limerick as vacant 
in 1580 "per obitum D. Ugonis Lacy, in sua ecclesia defuncti ;" and his successor, Dr. Corne- 
lius Nachten, was appointed in 1581. Dr. Lacy was deprived of the temporalities in 1571, and 
William Casey intruded by Edward VI. But he remained at liberty at least until 1575.— 3W 
Moran, A rchbishops of Dublin, vol. i. p. 186, and Ware's Bishops. See also Casey 's Recanta- 
tion, from the State Paper Office, in Brady, Papers concerning the Irish Church, p. 119. 



64 Martyrs and Confessors 

Vatican archives, published by Dr. Moran, gives a fuller 
account of their death. They were in the Golden Fort, 
held by a Spanish force under San Jose. When this 
traitor surrendered the fort to the English commander, 
Lord Gray, the letter continues : 

" At the request of the viceroy, the priest Laurence, 
Oliver Plunket, and William Willick, an Englishman, were 
delivered into his hands. To them the offer was made to 
be restored to liberty should they consent to take the oath 
of allegiance to the queen ;* but when they replied, with 
one accord, that they were Catholics, and that, by the grace 
of God, they would persevere in the faith, they were led 
off to a forge of an ironsmith, and then their arms and 
legs were broken in three different parts. During all that 
night and the following day they endured that torment 
with invincible patience. At length they were hanged, 
and their bodies cut into fragments." Sir R. Bingham 
(letter to Walsingham) says that an Englishman who had 
waited on Dr. Sanders, Plunket, who acted as interpreter, 
and an Irish priest were reserved for special punishment ; 
"their legs and arms were first broken, and they were 
hanged on a gibbet on the walls of the fort." — See Moran, 
History of the Archbishops of Dublin, vol. i. p. 202 ; and 
Haverty, History of Ireland, p. 243. 



REV. GELASIUS O'QUILLENAN, EUGENE CRONE, AND HUGH 
O'MELKERAN. 

"Father Gelasius O'Quillenan, of the Cistercian 
order, Abbot of the monastery of Boyle, was martyred, 
together with the priest Eugene Cronius, (probably Cronin,) 
1 5 80." — Philadelphia. 

The following account of the life of this holy martyr is 

* In which was embodied the oath of supremacy. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 65 

taken from Dr. Moran, who drew it from Henriquez and 
O' Sullivan : 

" Gelasius O'Cullenan was born of a noble family in 
Connaught, and in his early years joined the Cistercian 
order. Having completed his novitiate and sacred studies 
in Pans, the monastery of Boyle was destined as the field 
of his labors. On his arrival in Ireland, he found that the 
monastery, with its property, had been seized on by one of 
the neighboring gentry, who was sheltered in his usurpa- 
tion by the edict of Elizabeth. The abbot, nothing deterred 
by the penal enactment which he knew impended over 
him, went boldly to the usurping nobleman, and admonish- 
ed him of the guilt which he incurred, and the malediction 
of Heaven which he would assuredly draw down upon his 
whole family. Moved by his exhortations, the nobleman 
restored to him the full possession of the monastery and 
lands ; and some time after, contemplating the holy life of 
its inmates and the happy fruits of their zeal, and desirous 
to share in their apostolate, he too renounced the world 
and joined their religious institute. In 1580, Gelasius, 
being in Dublin, was arrested by order of the government, 
and, together with Hugh O'Melkeran, another Cistercian 
father, was thrown into the public jail. John O' Garvin,* 
then Protestant dean of Christ church, was among those 
who assisted at his first interrogatory, and, having propos- 
ed many inducements to the abbot ' to abandon the popish 
creed/ Gelasius, in reply, reproved him for preferring the 
deceitful vanities of this world to the lasting joys of eternity, 
and exhorted him ' to renounce the errors and iniquity, of 
heresy by which he had hitherto warred against God, and 
to make amends for the past by joining with him in pro- 
fessing the name of Christ, that he might thus become 
worthy to receive a heavenly crown.' The holy abbot and 

* He is styled Garvev by Ware and Mant, He was soon after appointed Protestant Bishop 
of Kilmore. 



66 Martyrs and Confessors 

his companion were then subjected to torture, and, among 
their other sufferings, we find it commemorated that their 
arms and legs were broken by repeated bk>ws, and fire was 
applied to their feet. The only words of Gelasius during 
all this torture ^were, ' Though you should offer me the 
princedom of England, I will not forfeit my eternal reward/ 
Sentence of death being passed against them, they were led 
out with all possible ignominy to execution. They, how- 
ever, were filled with consolation ; the sight of the joyous 
sufferers excited the admiration of the assembled mul- 
titude, and many even of the heretics declared that they 
were more like angels than men. It was on the 21st 
November, 1580, that they were happily crowned with 
martyrdom. The garments which they wore, and the im- 
plements of their torture, were eagerly purchased ■ by the 
Catholics, and cherished by them with religious veneration. 
Gelasius O'Cullenan is justly styled by the annalist of his 
order, ' Ordinis Cisterciensis decor, saeculi nostri splendor, et 
totius Hiberniae gloria."* — Henriquez, Fasciculus, part i. 
distinct 27, cap. i. ; G Sullivan, Hist. Cath. p. 126. 



REV. THADDEUS DONALD AND JOHN HANLY. 

These two martyrs received their crown on the 10th 
August, 1580. They had long labored among the suffer- 
ing faithful along the south-western coast of our island. 
When the convent of Bantry was seized by the English 
troops, these holy men received the wished-for crown of 

* Curry, in his Civil Wars, says : " Among many other Roman Catholic bishops and priests, 
there were put to death for the exercise of their function in Ireland Glaby O' Boyle, Abbot of 
Boyle, of the diocese of Elphin, and Owen O'Mulkeren, Abbot of the monastery of the Holy 
Trinity, in that diocese, hanged and quartered by Lord Gray in 1580." These two are pro- 
bably the subjects of our memoir. Glaby is Gelasius ; and the practice, common even now in 
Ireland, of calling a priest, especially a regular, only by his Christian name, as " Father John," 
would easily lead to the confusion as to the surname. O'Boyle, in Irish, would be, " from 
Boyle." 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 67 

martyrdom. Being conducted to a high rock impending 
over the sea, they were tied back to back and precipitated 
into the waves beneath.* 



REV. DANIEL O'NIELAN 

Was a priest of the diocese of Cloyne, and endured a most 
peculiar martyrdom, on the 28th March, 1580. He was a 
most apostolic man, full of attention to the wants of the 
poor and of solicitude for all his flock. He was no sooner 
arrested and conducted under a military guard to Youghal, 
than two wicked men, named Norris and Morgan, un- 
dertook the task of his execution. They conducted him 
to the summit of Trinity Tower, and, having fastened a 
rope around his waist and arms, precipitated him from the 
battlements. The rope not being sufficiently strong to 
resist the shock, the holy man fell, mangled and almost 
lifeless, to the ground. 

The fury of his executioners, however, was not allayed. 
Observing that life was not yet extinct, they caused him 
to be dragged to a mill not far distant, when they tied him 
to the water-wheel. His lacerated body in a few minutes 
was wholly disfigured, and scarcely retained the semblance 
of human remains.f 

Philadelphus adds that John Norris was commander 
(what he calls prefect) and William Morgan captain of the 
troop that arrested him. He says he was an Observantine 
Franciscan. Dr. Moran, on the authority of Bruodin, calls 
him a secular priest. Wadding also claims him as a Fran- 
ciscan. :£ 

* Bruodin, Passio Mart. p. 440, and Wadding, A nnales Ord. S. F. p. 251. 

t Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 

t Philadelph., and Wadding, Serif tores O. S. F., also Annals, vol. xxi. p. 258. 



68 Martyrs and Confessors 

REV. MAURICE SCANLAN, PHILIP O'SHEA, AND DANIEL 
O'HANRICHAN 

Were three secular priests, and natives of Kerry. For 
more than thirty years they had been indefatigable in 
their labors in their native county and the surrounding 
territory. It was in the town of Lislaghton that they 
received the crown of martyrdom. While the country 
around was laid waste by the agents of persecution, they 
hastened to the sanctuary to offer themselves as victims 
for their suffering flock. They were soon discovered there 
by the enemy, and immediately beheaded. The 6th of 
April, 1 5 8o, was the day of their happy triumph. — Bruodin. 

REV. MAURICE KINREHAN 

Was parish priest of Mullinahone, in Tipperary, in a speci- 
al manner attracted the rage of the heretics, and was com- 
pelled to take shelter, together with numbers of his flock, 
on the wild summits of Slievenamon. Rewards were more 
than once offered for his arrest, and his parish was frequent- 
ly scoured by military parties anxious to seize on their 
prey. 

At length, while engaged in administering the last 
sacraments to a dying man, he was overtaken by his pur- 
suers, who at once hurried him toward Clonmel. Before 
arriving in that town the officer of the guard, named 
Furrows, fearing lest the inhabitants might rescue the 
venerable captive, gave orders to have him despatched. 
The soldiers treated him with great brutality, and, hewing 
his body into fragments, scattered his mangled members 
along the highway, and brought his head as a trophy to the 
commander in Clonmel.* — Bruodin. 

* This 16 quite a different person from the Maurice Kinrechtin who suffered in 1585, whose 
life, as given by Roothe, see at that year. Hanrichan or O'Hanrichan, and Kinrechin or Kin- 
rechtin, and O' Kinrechtin were very common names in Tipperary at this period. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 69 

REV. EDMUND DONNELLY, S.J. 

His life is thus narrated by Tanner :* 

" At this same time, Ireland being involved in the same 
calamity by the queen, (Elizabeth,) the holy pontiff (Pius 
V.) sent spiritual assistance also to that country from the 
same society, among whom was Father Edmund Donatus, 
or, as he was called by many, Donnelly,, who came to a 
glorious end in the very commencement of his course, and 
was the first to declare in Ireland the truth of the Catholic 
religion by the shedding of his blood. f He was born at 
Limerick, and, by the desire of the holy father, returned 
to his native country to console and encourage the Catho- 
lics, then grievously tormented. But he was quickly 
seized by the enemies of the faith, who were watching 
everywhere most carefully, and kept for a long time in 
close custody in Limerick. There his constancy was 
tried in many ways, the ministers of error promising all 
sorts of rewards if he would abandon the Roman faith and 
embrace the errors of the Reformation. As the confessor 
of God remained unshaken, he was sent to Cork, distant 
some forty miles, to be further subjected to the cruelty of 
the question. He was dragged along the whole road with 
his hands tied behind his back like a robber, and made to 
endure all that is inflicted on murderers and traitors, and 
finally thrown into the common jail at Cork, where he 
was tortured in divers ways. As his constancy was still 
unshaken, he was tried for high treason and publicly con- 
demned, such grounds being assigned for the sentence as 
put the enviable fate of the martyr in its true light, for he 
was charged that he had been banished from the realm by 
Queen Elizabeth, under the penalty of treason if he return- 
ed, yet had returned to lead and strengthen his fellow- 

* Tanner, Societas Jesu tisq-ue ad Sanguinis et Vita Profusionem pro D-eo et Christian^ 
Religio?ie militans. 
t That is, the first of the Jesuits. 



70 Martyrs and Confessors 

citizens by his "Word and example ; and that he had denied 
to the queen the title of head of the English Church. This 
sentence, so unjust in itself, yet bearing such a glorious 
triumph to him, he received with the greatest alacrity and 
joy, and, bowing his head in token of thanks to his judges, 
he was led to the common place of execution as a traitor. 
There the rope was put round his neck, and he was hung 
some time from the gallows ; but while he was yet alive 
and breathing, the rope was cut and he fell to the ground, 
and his heart, cut out and held up by the executioner to 
be seen by the people, then thrown into the fire, with the 
rest of his entrails. The rest of his body was cut in four 
parts and affixed to poles, there to remain to be seen by 
all, as though his torn limbs would teach more fidelity to 
the queen. The holy man suffered at Cork, in 1580." — 
Tanner ; p. 8, Philadelph., and Bruodin, (lib. iii. cap. xx.,) 
who puts his death at 1575. 



TWENTY-TWO OLD MEN, WHOSE NAMES ARE NOT 
KNOWN. 

Philadelphia mentions these as follows : 
" I have also seen a catalogue in which are written the 
names of many lay Catholics who perished in consequence 
either of the fraud or calumnies of their enemies or the 
hatred of the orthodox faith which they professed. .... To 
these must be added from the same catalogue twenty-two 
old men, (Catholics,) whom, being unable to fly, the fury of 
the soldiers burnt to death in the village of Mohoriack, in 
Munster, the 26th day of June, 1580."* — Philadelph., De 
Processu. 

* Bruodin (lib. iii. cap. xx.) gives the name of the village as Ballymohun, in the diocese of 
Limerick. 






In the Reign of Elizabeth. yi 

FORTY CISTERCIAN MONKS OF ST. MARY'S, NENAGH. 

Their martyrdom is thus narrated by Dr. Moran, from 
Henriquez : 

" About the same time the monastery of St. Mary of 
Maggio* became illustrious by the martyrdom of its holy 
inmates. A heretical band having entered the adjoining 
country,, spreading on every side devastation and ruin, the 
monks of Maggio, forty in number, were in hourly expecta- 
tion of death. They resolved, however, not to fly from the 
monastery, choosing rather to consummate their course in 
the asylum which had been so long their happy abode. 
They therefore assembled in choir, and, having recited the 
morning office in silence and prayer, awaited their execu- 
tioners. The heretical soldiers did not long delay. On 
coming to the monastery, they first imagined that it 
had been abandoned, so universal was the silence that 
reigned around it, and they plundered it in every part. 
On arriving, however, at the church, they found the forty 
religious kneeling around the altar, unmoved, as if uncon- 
scious of the scenes ;of sacrilegious plunder that were 
perpetrated around them, and wholly absorbed in prayer. 
* Like hungry wolves, the heretics at once precipitated 
themselves upon the defenceless religious. The cruelty 
and ferocity of the soldiers was surpassed only by the 
meekness and heavenly joy of the victims/ and in a few 
minutes forty names were added to the long roll of our 
Irish saints. The vigil of the Assumption was the day con- 
secrated by their death. One lay brother of the monastery, 
who had been absent for some time, returned that evening, 
and found his former happy abode reduced to a heap of 
smoking ruins, and, entering the church, he found the altar 
and choir streaming with blood. Throwing himself pros- 
trate before the mutilated statue of Our Lady, he poured 

• "St. Mary, Abbey of Nenay, or De Maggio." — Ware's Antiquities. 



*J2 Martyrs and Confessors 

forth his lamentations that her monastery was no more, 
and that her glorious festival, which should be then com- 
menced, would pass in sadness and silence. He had 
scarcely breathed his prayer, when he heard the bells 
of the monastery toll, and, lifting his head, he saw his 
martyred brethren each taking his accustomed seat ; the 
abbot intoned the solemn vespers, and the psalms were 
sung as was usual on their festive days. The angels and 
the Queen of Heaven joined their voices with those of 
their now sainted companions. The enraptured lay brother 
knew not whether he had been assumed to heaven or was 
still on earth, till, the office being completed, the vision 
ceased, and he once more contemplated around him the 
mangled and bleeding remains of the martyred religious." 
Manriquez concludes his narrative of their triumph with the 
impressive words, "O happy Ireland, that is enriched 
with the treasure of so many martyrs ! O happy community, 
that sent forth so many intercessors to the heavenly 
throne I" — Moran } who refers to Henriquez, Manriquez, 
Sanctoral. Cisterc, and the Persecut, Hibemic. of the 
Irish Seminary of Seville. 



Anno 1581. 

ROBERT MEYLER, PATRICK CANAVAN, AND EDWARD 
CHEEVERS. 

" These, together with some other Catholic sailors, had 
secretly carried over into France a certain father of the 
Society of Jesus, and some other priests and laymen who 
were flying for the faith, and, being seized, were tortured 
and hung, cut down while only half-dead, and then dismem- 
bered, on the 5th day of July, 1581." — Philadelph. Bruo- 
din gives a slightly different account, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 73 



PATRICK HAYES, 

" A merchant and ship-owner of Wexford, because that 
he had oftentimes aided the Catholics in their distress, 
both bishops, priests, and others, suffered a long impri- 
sonment, and, worn out by confinement and suffering at 
Dublin, he slept in the Lord in the year 1581." — Phila- 
delph. 



REV. RICHARD FRENCH, 

" A priest of the diocese of Ferns, worn out with labori- 
ous journeys, was cast into prison, because that he had 
ingenuously confessed and strenuously defended the faith, 
and sank under the filth and horrors of the prison, going 
to his Lord in the year of salvation 1581." — Philadelph. 



REV. MATTHEW LAMPORT 

"Was a priest and rector of a parish near Dublin, where 
he was made prisoner by the heretics and sent to Dublin, 
where he was put to death, rather from hatred to the 
Catholic religion, which he zealously maintained, than for 
the reason which was alleged, namely, that he had frequent- 
ly given hospitality to Father Rochford, the Jesuit. He 
was hung and cut in four parts, and so gloriously died, 1st 
July, 1 58 1."* — Bruodin,\ib. hi. cap. xx. 

* This is a curious instance where the law making it treason to " entertain a Jesuit" wa3 
literally put in execution. Roothe, however, says that it was for having given shelter to the 
Catholic Baron of Baltinglas when in extreme want 



74 Martyrs and Confessors 

Anno 1582. 

REV. DONATUS HEINRECHAN, PHILIP O'FEUS, AND 
MAURICE O'SCALLAN, O.S.F. 

" These Franciscan monks and priests were seized by 
the heretics in their monastery of Lisacten,* not being 
able to fly, on account of their age and loss of sight, and 
violently dragged before the high altar of the church and 
there slain, a precious holocaust of sweet savor in the 
sight of the Lord, the 20th July, in the year 1582." — Phila- 
delph., and Wadding, Annals, vol. xxi. p. 366. 



REV. THADDiEUS O'MERAN, FELIX O'HARA, AND HENRY 
LAYHODE, O.S.F. 

" In the convent of Enniscorthy, Thaddaeus O'Meran, 
father guardian of the convent, Felix O'Hara, and Henry 
Layhode, under the government of Henry Wallop, Viceroy 
of Ireland, were taken prisoners in their convent by the 
soldiers, and for five days tortured in various ways, and then 
slain." — Annals, vol. xxi. p. 366. 



ROGER DONNELLAN, CHARLES GORAN, PATRICK KENNAN 
ROGER O'HANLON, AND JOHN PILAN, O.S.F., 

" Having been long kept most strictly confined in prison 
in Dublin, worn out with misery and squalor of the prison, 
there died, the 13th February, 1582." — Annals, ut sup. 



REV. jENEAS PENNY, 
" A priest of Connaught, was slain by the heretical sol- 
diers, in the act of celebrating the holy sacrifice of the 

* Friary of Lislaghtin (county of Kerry.) The place has its name from St. Lactin, who died 
in the year 622.— Ware, p. 107. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 75 

Mass, in his parish church of Killatra, the 4th May, 1582." 
— Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



REV. DONATUS O'RIEDY, 

" Also a priest of Connaught and parish priest of 
Coolrah, when the soldiers of Elizabeth rushed into the 
village, sought refuge in the church ; but in vain, for he 
was there hung near the high altar and afterward pierced 
with swords, and so nobly finished his life, 12th June, 
1582." — Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



REV. JOHN WALLIS, 

"A priest of Leinster, honorable by birth, out still 
more by piety, was seized by the heretics and endured 
many torments. Being sent prisoner to England, he there 
died, in the prison of Worcester, and so triumphed for 
Christ, 20th January, 1582." — Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



Anno 1583. 

MOST REV. NICHOLAS SKERRETT, 

" Archbishop of Tuam, after a long imprisonment, es- 
caped to Portugal, and died, much regretted, in the city 
of Lisbon, in 1583. He is buried in the church of St. 
Roch."* — De Processu Martyriali. 

DAME MARGERY BARNEWALL. 
I give her life from Dr. Roothe : 
* This virgin was born of noble parents, and when she 

* Brennan says " he was flogged and incarcerated," but does not refer to his authority.— 
Eccl. Hist. vol. ii. p. 123. 



y6 Martyrs and Confessors 

attained a marriageable age determined to dedicate her vir- 
ginity to God, and in her thirtieth year received the hoi) 
veil from the Catholic bishop. The name of virgin, says 
St. Ambrose, is a title of modesty, and the one of whom I 
write did not disappoint the omen of the name ; for she ever 
delighted in purity and the conversation of other devout and 
modest virgins. She dwelt, for the most part, in the city, 
or at least diocese, of Dublin ; nor could her profession and 
mode of life be long concealed from the pretended bishop 
of the place, for information of it was given to him by a 
spy, not for misliking of the life of the holy virgin, but for 
hope of lucre from the archbishop. On receiving the in- 
formation, he sent an apparitor to arrest the lady and bring 
her before him. She was first thrown into prison, and then 
brought out for a public examination. Many questions 
were put to her regarding her name, parentage, age, resi- 
dence, and profession, to all of which she answered pru- 
dently and categorically. Her age was then thirty-three, 
her condition that of a virgin. ' How,' said the pseudo- 
bishop, 'can I believe that one so noble born, so well 
brought up, and so fair, could remain in this wicked world 
to that age a virgin ?' This he took from the ideas of Lu- 
ther, who, himself given up to concupiscence, remembered 
not those classes of eunuchs of whom our Lord speaks, of 
whom those who voluntarily renounce carnal pleasures for 
the kingdom of heaven obtain the reward ; and though 
this work is difficult and beyond the ordinary strength of 
man, yet it is not impossible to Him whom all things obey 
and whose power is equal to his will. But our Sunami- 
tess, who by the grace of God had observed that which 
she had promised, modestly blushing, answered that she 
marvelled her questioner should think it strange that God 
should give strength to observe the vow he had himself 
inspired, and which so many men and women in all ages had 
observed. Thus repulsed with regard to her vow of virgini- 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. . 77 

ty, the bishop attacked her faith, using many artifices to in- 
duce her to swerve from the orthodox faith ; but she bold- 
ly and plainly answered that she had hitherto lived in the 
bosom of the mother church Catholic and Roman, and 
was resolved in the same to die, nor was there aught in 
life which could shake this her resolution. Irritated by 
this answer, the bishop at once ordered her to be taken 
back into prison. After she had been there detained for 
some time, she escaped by the aid of her noble relatives, 
who bribed the jailer, and, having found a British ship in 
the port of Dublin, agreed with the master to take her to 
St. Male* This is a city in the lesser Britain, called also 
Armorica, surrounded with walls and towers, yet for great- 
er safety, when the gates are shut at night, large, fierce 
dogs are loosed to strengthen the guard. They roam out- 
side the walls and ferociously attack any man or beast 
whom they may meet. The sailors spoke much among 
themselves before they arrived at the port ; this inspired 
Dame Margery and her handmaiden with some fear, and 
she determined not rashly to expose herself to them. 

" When the ship reached the port and had dropped her 
anchor, the captain and his men landed, leaving only two 
sailors to guard the women till morning, for it was late 
when they arrived in the bay, and they had to go some 
distance in a boat to land. The women feared the dogs 
on land, but the dogs on sea proved even more dangerous ; 
for the two unprincipled sailors, finding themselves left 
alone with the two women, broke into the place where they 
were sleeping, and tried, first by offers and promises, and 
then by violence, to make them consent to their impure 
desires ; but the holy virgins, calling God and our Blessed 
Lady to their aid, resisted alike their solicitations and 
their violence, and, strengthened by him who is the 
strength of those that call upon him, were enabled to de- 

* Sancti Maclovis Portus. 



78 Martyrs and Confessors 

feat their unholy violence. At length, wearied with their 
obstinate resistance, the sailors left them, and, retiring to 
their own berths, slept heavily. 

" All thought of sleep had fled from the terrified wo- 
men, and, trembling lest they should again be attacked by 
these vile men, they thought of flying from that den of wild 
beasts. Tying their clothes tightly around them, they 
threw themselves into the sea, and, supported by their 
clothes, which floated on the water, were borne to the 
shore. But as they reached the land, having thus escaped 
two successive dangers, a third awaited them — the dread 
of the ferocious dogs who roamed round the walls at night 
and spared neither man nor beast. The maid was par- 
ticularly terrified, but her mistress encouraged her, re- 
minding her of the divine providence and goodness, and 
saying that it were better for them that their bodies should 
be devoured by dogs than their souls destroyed by vicious 
men. Thus they mutually encouraged each other, arming 
themselves with the sign of the cross, and imploring the 
divine assistance and the protection of the Blessed Virgin 
as they approached the shore. On their landing, the fero- 
cious watch-dogs rushed at them, and the largest and 
fiercest placed his paws on the shoulders of the virgin, as 
if about to tear her ; her maid, following behind, trembled, 
but the mistress, repeating the verse of the psalm, ' Many 
dogs surrounded me/ and speaking some words of her na- 
tive Irish to the dog, gently stroked his head, and the dog, 
suddenly becoming gentle, with all his fellows, led them to 
the gate of the city, and guarded them there safely until 
the gates were opened, which, according to custom, was 
not until the sun had arisen. 

" When those who had the charge of the keys of the 
gates, and of the dogs, opened them in the morning, they 
were astonished to see two women alive and unhurt in the 
midst of the savage dogs, and, after a few questions, they 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 79 

led them to the bishop of the place, who was then cele- 
brating the divine mysteries in the church. The news of 
the strange event spread through the city, and a crowd as- 
sembled at the church to see the two women who, contra- 
ry to all example, had escaped safe from the dogs. 

"The bishop, when he had finished Mass, examined 
them by means of an interpreter, for he did not understand 
Irish, nor they French or English. But by good fortune 
there was present a noble of Maclon,* who had been 
brought up in Ireland, and who knew the parents of our 
Margery, perhaps even herself, having resided in the 
neighborhood, as there is a constant intercourse between 
the inhabitants of Maclon and Ireland, the young people 
of each country being entertained in the other to learn the 
language and custom of the people, as is still the custom 
in some parts of Ireland. 

" In order more certainly to learn all the affair, the bi- 
shop sent for the captain, and asked him what he knew of 
the women. He frankly told the whole tale, how they had 
been recommended to him in Dublin, and had come in his 
ship, and how he had left them in it the preceding even- 
ing to await for day in order to land. Finally, the two sail- 
ors who had assaulted them were brought up, and, on their 
confessing their guilt, the two women whom they had 
sought to injure begged that they might be forgiven. 

" All having thus come to light, the bishop, lest 
the recollection of these events should perish, ordered the 
whole examination and the result to be enrolled in the 
public registers of the town, and most hospitably enter- 
tained, during their stay, the two women thus preserved 
by the divine providence ; nor when they departed did he 
allow them to leave empty-handed. They had made a 
vow to God, who had freed them from such great danger^ 
to visit the shrine of St. James of Compostella. On their 

* Dr. Roothe writes it Maclon. 



Bo Martyrs and Confessors 

arrival there, the servant fell ill, and departed to the Lord. 
The stronger constitution of the mistress enabled her to 
continue her pilgrimage to Rome, and to visit the tombs of 
the apostles. There she related to her confessor the whole 
of this narrative — of her imprisonment in Ireland and her 
escape, her voyage to Brittany, the assaults of the two sail- 
ors and her escape from their power, the unusual gentle- 
ness of the watch-dogs, and how the waves and the wild 
beasts had spared their innocence. 

"Afterward, by her counsel and example, many pious 
women and religious maidens in Ireland dedicated their 
chastity to God, and, to use the words of St. Jerome, {Epist, 
8, Ad Demetr.,) ' by the solemn words of the priest cover- 
ed their consecrated heads with the virginal veil ;' and 
many more would have done so had those who ruled the 
country allowed them to lead a cenobitical life. But since, 
according to the proverb, women require the protection 
either of a man or a wall, to guard them ' from the attacks 
of the noonday devil, from the arrow that flieth by day, and 
the thing that walketh in the night,' prudent men were 
cautious in exhorting the weaker sex to take on them the 
veil and vow of celibacy, lest the purity of that virginal 
garment should become tarnished in the heat of the world- 
ly sun, since it is more easily guarded in the shade of the 
cloister than in the throng of the world. Yet there still 
remain in that land scattered shoots of that virginal tree, 
whose light shines the brighter for the surrounding dark- 
ness, and by whom the world, the flesh, and the devil are 
overcome. 

" Our Margery was taken prisoner by the Protestants 
in Dublin, in the year 1580, and in the third following 
year, that is, 1583, in the month of October, reached 
Rome, and there gave an account of all these her wander- 
ings to her confessor, from whom we learned them, and 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 8r 

for the edification of our readers have here written them." 
— De Processu Martyriali. 

Dr. Roothe does not mention, nor have I been able to 
find, the date or place of Dame Margery Barnewall's 
death. As he says himself, he collected, from time to 
time, what authentic accounts he could of the sufferings 
of those persecuted for the faith ; and thus probably her 
confessor, who was his informant, could only tell him the 
events of her life up to her arrival in Rome and departure 
thence. 

A-tino 1584. 

MOST REV. DERMOD O'HURLEY, ARCHBISHOP OF CASHEL. 

I give his life from Dr. Roothe, and in the notes any 
additional facts from O'Sullivan and others. 

" The birthplace of this glorious martyr was a little vil- 
lage in the diocese of Limerick, less than three miles from 
that city, called Lycodoon,* where his parents lived re- 
spectably by farming, both of tillage and cattle ; they 
were held in good estimation by their neighbors, both 
rich and poor, especially James Geraldine, Earl of Des- 
mond. His father's name was William Hurley, owner of 
the farm of Lycodoon, and also steward or bailiff for 
many years to the said earl, whose power and fame was 
in those days great in all that region, and, indeed, through- 
out Ireland, although by change of fortune all that power 
has fallen. His mother was Honor McBrien, who was de- 
scended from the celebrated family of Briens, Earls of Tho- 
mond, and, before the conquest of Ireland, Kings of Mun- 
ster. But in treating of the man of whom we write it 

* Lycodunum : Lycodoon still retained in the town land — no longer a village — of Lyco- 
doon, parish of Knockea, now the property of William Smith O'Brien, Esq. — ReneJian, p. 
251. Vicus, or village, seems, in writers of this period, often to mean only what is still called 
in Ireland, among the peasantry, " the town," namely, the dwelling-house of a gentleman or 
farmer, with its surrounding offices and laborers' cottages. 



82 Martyrs and Confessors 

boots but little to speak of his descent or the position of 
his ancestors, since he himself placed little or none of his 
glory in such things. 

' Nam genus et proavos et quae non fecimus ipsi 
Vix ea nostra voce' 

" By the care and liberality of his parents, he received 
a liberal education, and, having passed through all branches 
of study, received the doctor's degree in civil and canon 
law ;* and, having made equal progress in piety and reli- 
gion, he was chosen by the Holy See as a fitting man to 
be made the shepherd of his Catholic countrymen in Ire- 
land, then suffering under the storm of schism. f 

" Having then been raised to the episcopacy by Gre 
gory XIII., and named Archbishop of Cashel, he took his 
route toward Ireland. But there was great difficulty in 
proceeding, from the dangers to which, in those turbulent 
times, Catholic merchants and sailors were exposed from 
the heretics. 

" However, after some time, having found an opportu- 
nity of a Waterford ship in the port of Grosvico,J in Ar- 
morican Britain, he treated with the ship's factor for a 
passage to Ireland. There were in the same town, at that 
time, some other ecclesiastics of the same nation, who 
were also desirous to cross to Ireland, among whom was 
Niel, Abbot, of the Cistercian Order of the Abbey of 
Newry,§ in the diocese of Armagh. 

" And that all may understand the greatness of the 
danger which is daily encountered by the laborers in our 
vineyard, when they seek to return to their country to 

* He gave public lectures in philosophy for four years in Louvain, and subsequently held, 
with great applause, the chair of canon law in Rheims. — Elogium Elegiac. ap. Moran, Hist. 
Archbishops, i. 132. 

t He was appointed by Gregory XIII. in 1580. — Ex Act. Consist, ap. Moran. 

t Probably Cherbourg. 

§ Abbas de Urio, Newry. One of the old and most commonly used Irish names of Newrj 
was Uar. whence the Latin " de Urio." See an account of it in Ware. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 83 

spend their labor, and even their lives, for Christ and his 
church, it must be considered that it is most difficult to 
find sure and faithful men to whom the poor travellers can 
safely trust themselves. For, if the merchant himself be 
imbued with the new errors, (which is, however, very rare 
in a real Irishman,) or the captain of the ship, or even any 
of the common sailors, (who are often of other nations, as 
Britons, English, or Scotch,) the wretched priest is in dan- 
ger of being denounced, especially if there is any suspi- 
cion of his being of any dignity, or even if the sailors 
have a bare suspicion that he be of an ecclesiastical voca- 
tion, as lately befell two Capuchin monks, whose innocence 
and uprightness was known to all, anno 16 18. But as 
these two unexpectedly escaped from the hands of their 
pursuers, so may their example make others hope confi- 
dently in the divine bounty, which never deserts those 
who trust in him, but upholds with his almighty arm those 
who are under trial lest they fall, or withdraws them from 
danger lest they perish, and even strengthens them, when 
necessary, to confess his name before the kings and princes 
of the earth. The greatest and most frequent danger to 
which those are exposed who seek to save their neighbors' 
souls in Ireland, and that when they least expect it, is that 
of being betrayed on their landing by the sailors, either 
through treachery or fear of themselves incurring danger.* 
" There is another danger on the shores- of Catholic 
lands, lest they be denounced beforehand by spies, of 
whom there are many in all the ports from which they 
may sail, even in Catholic lands. There is danger also 

* There were heavy penalties enacted against all those who should " aid in introducing Je 
suits or priests." How strictly these were enforced another passage from our author will 
show : " As a certain father of the Society of Jesus, and with the illustrious Baron of In- 
chiquin, who had received him as a guest, was thrown into prison ; the latter was at length 
dismissed with a heavy fine, for having extended to a man, bound to him both by religion and 
blood, that hospitality which, in our country, is ever extended to all. The merchant who 
brought the priest was deprived of all his property by the president." — Analecta Sacra 
Nova. 



84 Martyrs and Confessors 

awaiting them on the shores of their own land, that of 
being arrested by the guards of the port and the authori- 
ties of the town ; dangers by sea, lest they fall into the 
hands of heretical pirates, who would slay them for hatred 
of the Catholic faith ; danger every day they live in Ire- 
land of falling into the hands of her present rulers, as 
lately happened to the Reverend Father Abbot Paul Ra- 
getus, after a stay of many years in his native land, and a 
little before, the same fate befell the Reverend Father 
Guin,* of whom the one was arrested as he was just about 
to step into the ship to embark in order to leave the king- 
dom, and the other as he was going to the seaport town 
to embark for France ; both were thrown into prison in 
the Castle of Dublin, thus proving how every step in Ire- 
land is beset with danger. However, he who was last ar- 
rested, having greased the hands of his guards, (to use the 
common expression,) managed to escape ; but the other, 
who, as it seems, had less of .that ointment and ' oil of sin- 
ners,' still lies in prison, with many other regular and se- 
cular priests. But we have one ground of hope for them, 
and all our countrymen, arising from the marriage of our 
prince, which we pray God may be prosperous.! 

" Since what we are every day witnessing has led me 
into this digression, I hope that pity for our daily misery 
will obtain me the reader's pardon. My only reason for 
this mention was to show to what dangers our Archbishop 
of Cashel exposed himself when he set his face to return 
into his own land, as a sheep prepared for the slaughter. 
He entrusted to a certain merchant of Wexford the re- 
script of his appointment and his other papers conferring 
on him the care of the flock, for he would not seem to 
thrust himself into the episcopacy without being duly 



* Probably Quin. 

t The proposed marriage between the heir of the crown, Charles, (afterward Charles I.,) 
and the daughter of the Span'sh queen. 



hi the Reign of Elizabeth. 85 

called and appointed, as do our modern innovators, like 
those of old. But being duly ordained and consecrated 
by the Apostolic See, he could truly say, ' Of the Lord is 
our calling, and of the Holy One of Israel our King.' 
But these sacred writings he preferred to send by others 
and by another road, that he might be exposed to less 
danger on entering the kingdom, as well as the merchants 
who took him with them. For merchants who bring in 
such persons are exposed to no little danger, as this very 
merchant, R. H.,* had experienced, as well as many others ; 
as, for example, G. D., who, because he was cognizant of 
the bringing of the primate into Ireland, was punished 
with three years' imprisonment and heavy loss of fortune. 
Thus is it seen that neither their incoming nor their out- 
going nor their abiding is safe. 

" The Wexford merchant who carried the bulls fell into 
the hands of pirates, by whom he was spoiled and so pil- 
laged that he deemed it a mercy his life was spared. But 
the archbishop, taking advantage, as I have said, of a 
Waterford ship, committed himself to the divine providence, 
and, after a prosperous voyage, reached the island of 
Skerries,j and from thence proceeded to Waterford. 
While he was hospitably entertained there,f it chanced 
that one day there was some conversation on religion ; 
on these occasions his zeal and learning could not be re- 
strained or concealed, and so offended a certain heretic 
who was present, whose name was Walter Baal, (a fitting 
name, since of old it designated the devil and a son of 
Belial ;) he broke out into violent language, and soon after 



* He gives only the initials of his name. 

t Sciretio insula ; in Irish, Sciric. He landed at Drogheda. — See State Papers. 

% O'Sullivan says : " For two whole years English spies sought every opportunity to seize 
on his person ; but their plans were frustrated by the fidelity of the Irish Catholics. In 
order to escape notice, he wore generally a secular dress, as indeed all bishops and priests 
are obliged to do in England, Ireland, and Scotland ever since this persecution first broke 
out."— P. 124. 



86 Martyrs and Confessors 

starting off to Dublin, denounced Dermod to the govern- 
ors on suspicion. The departure of this man suggested to 
the archbishop the thought that it boded him rio good, and 
his fears were confirmed by an honest citizen, who warned 
him and the companion, or rather guide, of his journey, 
Father John Dillon, of their danger, and advised them to 
leave that city immediately.* The same father Dillon 
afterward paid the penalty of this companionship by a 
long imprisonment, and with difficulty escaped death by 
the favor of his elder brother, who was at that time one of 
the King's Council, and filled the office of First President 
of the King's Exchequer or Treasury. 

" They immediately departed with their little baggage, 
and betook themselves to Slane, to the castle of the noble 
Lord Thomas Fleming, Baron of Slane.f Here, by desire 
of that pious heroine, Catherine Preston, wife of the afore- 
said baron, they were concealed in a secret chamber. 
They remained here for some time, removed from society, 
and avoided being seen by any but friends, until the at- 
tempt of Baal to have them arrested should have wholly 
failed, and the rumor spread by him should have died 
away. When they thought that the whole matter was 
forgotten, they began to act a little more freely, to sit at 
table with the family and join in their conversation, and no 
longer to avoid meeting any guests that might chance to 
come to the house. Now, it so chanced that one day there 
came to that house, whether by accident or design, Robert 
Dillon, one of the King's Council, and Chief-Justice of the 
Court of Common Pleas. At table the conversation turned 



* O' Sullivan gives the date of this 1583. 

t Ismay Dillon, daughter of Sir Bartholomew Dillon, of Riverstown, county Meath, and 
aunt to Sir Robert, was married to John Fleming, of Stephenstown, second son of James, 
Lord Slane, by whom she had Thomas, Lord Slane. Dillon and Lord Slane were therefore 
cousins. Dillon was then Chief- Justice of the Court of Common Pleas. The wife of Lord 
Slane, Catherine Preston, was daughter of Jenico, the third Viscount Gormanston. She died 
in 1597, and was buried in the hermitage of St. Erk Slane. — See ArchdaWs Lodge, vol. iii. 
p. 78 ; iv. pp. 143. 14* 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. Sy 

on serious subjects, and the archbishop betrayed so much 
learning that it gave occasion to the sagacious chief- 
justice (who bodily was blind of one eye, and mentally 
wholly blinded by ambition) to mark the man, to inquire 
who he was, whence he came, and to put many other 
questions, the answers to all of which he kept to himself 
until he had the opportunity to lay them before the govern- 
ors and the council. He laid all his suspicions before 
the council, and proposed that he should be brought from 
his hiding-place to answer for himself to the council, and 
that if he fled he would confirm their suspicions ; and that 
the Baron of Slane should be summoned before the coun- 
cil, and held either to produce his guest or answer for him. 
The bishop fled, and the baron, having appeared before 
the council, was severely reprimanded for sheltering such 
a man, and threatened with heavy fine and imprisonment 
unless he found and produced his late guest. Terrified by 
these threats, the baron at once set out to pursue him ; 
for, being tepid in faith, and bound up with the world, he 
shrank from what seemed to threaten certain destruction, 
especially as the persecutors were so bitter in their rage 
against the archbishop, and their threats against himself 
for having sheltered him. Loftus,* who was the colleague 
of Wallop, did not so thirst for the blood of the innocent, 
for he was more inclined to gentleness by nature and 
equity, as beseemed a chancellor ; but his partner in the 
government was a son of Mars, and, skilled rather in the 
arts of Bellona than of Pallas, was a man of blood, and not 
to be satisfied without shedding it. His mind, too, was 
exasperated against Archbishop Dermod by an unfound- 
ed suspicion which he had conceived that that prelate 
had been a party to a process which had been some time 
before instituted at Madrid or Rome against a grandson of 

* "Anno 1582-3. — Lords-Justices of Ireland, Adam Loftus, Archbishop of Dublin and 
Lord-Chancellor, with Sir Henry Wallop, Treasurer of Ireland."— Ware's Annals. 



88 Martyrs and Confessors 

his, who had been denounced to the Inquisition by his 
own countrymen for offences against religion.* This 
prosecution is said to have so inflamed the mind of the 
lord-justice against our prelate that he could not be 
satisfied with less than his death ; as this was well known 
to the council, they admonished the Baron of Slane that, 
if he would save his own life, he must produce the bishop. 

" Looking more to his own safety than to the duty of 
friendship, he pursued hotly after the archbishop, and, 
overtaking him at Carrick-on-Suir, just as he had returned 
from visiting the blessed cross, f a visit which, when in 
danger, he had vowed to make, he prayed him very civilly 
to accompany him to Dublin, there to appear before the 
council, and prove his innocence, and show that he had 
come to Ireland with a true ecclesiastical spirit, and to 
preach the faith. What was the pious bishop to do ? He 
recked not of his own danger, but looked to the safety of 
the baron. At that time there was at Cork the great Earl 
of Ormond, Thomas Butler, of devout memory, who loved 
Dermod, and respected his virtue and the dignity of his 
office, and ordered him to be supplied with food and all 
necessaries from his own house ; and many say that he had 
his recently born son, James, who afterward died young in 
England, privately baptized by him. 

"At that time the unfortunate rising of the southern 
nobles had been suppressed, and the Earl of Desmond 
himself, having lost nearly all his forces, was about to seek 
safety in concealment. I express no opinion on the 
matter, nor do I attribute to any one the blame of the 
crime that was committed \% nor shall I speak of the Lord 

* Nota Authoris. — " Others relate that Wallop tortured the archbishop out of hatred and 
envy to the Earl of Ormond, by whom the prelate had been received." 

t This would be the Abbey of Holy Cross, in Tipperary, a celebrated pilgrimage in those 
days. — See Haverty^s History of Irelattd, p. 413. 

% Our author refers here to the treachery by which the Desmonds were pursued, and to 
the slaughter, after quarter given, of the unarmed Spanish garrison of the fort at Smerwick 
Harbor, by 01 ler of Arthur, Lord Gray, in 1580. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 89 

Arthur Gray having violated the pledge he had given to 
the auxiliary troops ; but it is believed by many that 
Archbishop Dermod, either of his own idea or at the 
suggestion of others, wished to see the Earl of Desmond 
ere he retired to his fastnesses, to console him, and if it 
might be to bring him back to courses more consistent 
with his honor and safety ; and if the earl had turned a 
willing ear to the advice the archbishop sought to give 
him, and if this prudent design had not been cut short by 
the imprisonment of Dermod, Munster would not have 
had to deplore the wretched death of the earl, which hap- 
pened a little later, at the hands of two wretched cut-throats. 
" As the bishop travelled back to Dublin with the baron, 
each night when the latter put up either in the public inn 
or the house of a friend, the former was thrust into the 
public prison, for greater security, as if he wore the wings 
of Mercury on his feet to enable him to fly. One night he 
spent in Kilkenny in prison, and there a certain Catholic 
came to him to obtain the benefit of his ministry ; their 
conversation turned upon the unhappy Bishop of Ferns,* 
whom human weakness and the fear of men had led to de- 
sert the Catholic faith. ' Many,' said our holy martyr, ' who 
are lions before the battle, are timid stags when the hour 
of trial comes. Lest this prove true of me, I daily pray to 
our good Lord for strength ; for " let him that thinketh to 
stand look lest he fall." ' Thus did he work out his salva- 
tion with fear and trembling, neither puffed up with self- 
confidence nor cast down by fear, and kept himself with 



♦One circumstance connected with the heroic constancy of Dr. O' Hurley deserves to be 
specially commemorated. The Bishop of Ferns had wavered in his allegiance to the Holy 
See, and hence, at this period, stood high in court favor. Witnessing the triumph of Dr. 
O'Hurley, he was struck with remorse for his own imbecility and criminal denial of his faith, 
and, hastening to the lords-justices, declared that he was sorry for his past guilt, and now re- 
jected with disdain the temporal supremacy of Elizabeth. " He too," writes the Bishop of 
Killaloe in October that same year, " is now confined in a most loathsome dungeon, from 
which every ray of light is excluded."— Mo ran, p. 135, Epist. cit. See a further account of 
this bishop, Dr. Power, at p. 156. 



QO Martyrs and Confessors 

the sheep of Christ in the sheepfold who hear the voice of 
Christ in that of his vicegerent. When the archbishop 
arrived in Dublin, he was brought before the Privy Council 
for examination,* falsely accused of many crimes, and he 
meekly showed his innocence. The chancellor, Adam 
Loftus, treated him more gently, and sought by many ca- 
jolements to induce him to conform, as they call it. Sir 
Henry Wallop was more savage, and repeatedly broke out 
into violent and abusive threats, and showed that his invet- 
erate hatred to the orthodox faith would never be satisfied 
with anything less than the slaughter of this innocent 
lamb. 

" As, after many examinations, no shadow even of crime 
could be discovered against him, and he could not be con- 
demned by the tribunals, according to the common law of 
this kingdom, without either proof of some crime or the 
confession of the criminal, the judges were consulted whe- 
ther he could not, at least, be sent into England, there to 
be tried under the statutes recently passed there against 
the Catholic subjects of that kingdom, especially those 
suspected of any foreign intrigues. But the judges an- 
swered that, as Ireland, although part of the possessions 
of the English crown, is governed by its own laws, cus- 
toms, and statutes, and is a different kingdom from Eng- 
land, with a different parliament, different privileges, and 
different tribunals, no one not born in England could be 
sent there to be tried by the laws of that kingdom. 

" Since, then, he was not subject to the law of England, 
and could not be proved guilty of any crime in his own 
country, that no means might be left him of escaping the 
hands of the executioner, a new and strange mode of trial 



* 1 Sullivan says at his first examination he was asked if he were a priest, to which he an- 
swered in the affirmative, and added, moreover, that he was an archbishop. He was then 
thrown into a dark and loathsome prison, and kept there, bound in chains, till the Holy Thurs- 
day of the following year. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 91 

was devised against him. And as by the laws of war some 
military crimes are punishable by death by the authority 
of the general, and sudden risings or breaches of military 
discipline may be checked by sudden punishments, this 
bloody soldier determined to have the peaceful bishop 
slain by military law, as he could not attain his end by the 
laws of his country. But he determined first to subject 
him to the torture, that, if he could not extort by pain any 
confession of guilt, he might perchance be induced by the 
intensity of his sufferings to abjure the Catholic faith. But 
the cruel tyrant was disappointed in Dermod ; his flames 
could not overcome the flames of the love of Christ ; the 
fire that burnt without was less powerful than that which 
burned within his breast. 

" Fortunately we have a description of his sufferings, 
written by a noble and learned man, a citizen of Dublin, 
who learned the circumstance from eye-witnesses, if in- 
deed he were not himself in the city when our martyr suf- 
fered ; wherefore I will give his words, as given in the 
introduction to his discussion with James Usher. (Stani- 
hurst, pp. 29, 30.) After having said a few words of the 
martyrdom of Richard Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh and 
Primate of All Ireland, words which I will give in writing 
of the death of that prelate, he adds, regarding Dermod 
O'Hurley : 

" ' The Archbishop of Cashel met a harder fate, and the 
barbarous cruelty of Calvinism cannot be better shown 
than by it. The executioners placed the archbishop's feet 
and calves in tin boots filled with oil ; they then fastened 
his feet in wooden shackles or stocks, and placed fire un- 
der them. The boiling oil so penetrated the feet and legs 
that morsels of the skin and even flesh fell off and left the 
bone bare.* The officer whose duty it was to preside over 
the torture, unused to such unheard-of suffering, and un- 

* O Sullivan says he was subjected to this torture for an hour. 



92 Martyrs and Confessors 

able to look on such an inhuman spectacle or to bear the 
piteous cries of the innocent prelate, suddenly left his seat 
and quitted the place. The cruel minds of the Calvinistic 
executioners were gratified, but not appeased, by these ex- 
traordinary torments ; and a few days afterward, wholly 
unexpectedly, they took out the archbishop, who from his 
sufferings was indeed suffering a daily death, yet had no 
reason to expect execution, to a place a little distance from 
the Castle of Dublin. This was done at early dawn, lest 
the spectacle should excite a tumult among the people. 
There they hung him with a halter roughly woven of twigs, 
to increase his torture. This barbarous and inhuman cru- 
elty satiated indeed their thirst for his blood, but opened 
for the holy prelate the fountain of eternal life ; so that, 
drinking of its eternal source, though cast down, he is 
raised up ; though conquered, he hath conquered ; slain, 
he lives, and by the cruelty of the Calvinists triumphs 
everlastingly. 

" ' The cries of the holy archbishop, of which I have 
spoken, were no murmurs of an impatient mind — not a cry 
as the cry of Esau, or as those that mourn the dead, but 
the sighs of a Christian breast feeling the bitterness of its 
torments ; for he was a man of sorrows and acquainted 
with infirmity, and from the sole of his foot to the crown 
of his head all was tormented. Not only his legs and feet 
were tortured with the boiling oil and salt, but his whole 
body was burnt with the heat, and bathed in the chill per- 
spiration of exhaustion. With a loud voice he cried out, 
" Jesus, Son of David, have mercy upon me !" raising up 
his voice with his soul to him who alone is mighty to save. 
No torture could wring from him aught but a profession 
of the orthodox faith ; he was stronger than his tortures, 
for neither boiling oil nor piercing salt nor blazing fire 
could shake his faith or extinguish his love of God. 

" 'Exhausted and, as it were, suffocated by his suffer- 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 93 

ings while fastened in the stocks, the archbishop lost all 
voice and sense, and when taken out lay on the ground 
like dead, unable to move hand or foot, or even eye or 
tongue. The head executioner began to fear lest he had 
exceeded his orders, which were only to torture and not to 
kill, and might be punished for having put him to death 
without orders. He therefore directed him to be wrapped 
in linen and laid on a feather bed, and poured a few drops 
into his mouth to see if any life yet remained in the tor- 
tured body, and if he could be recalled to his senses. The 
next morning, as he had a little revived, aromatic drinks 
were administered to him, to give him strength to endure 
new torments, the executioners rejoicing as they saw him 
slowly swallow it from a spoon, for they feared to receive 
from Wallop the same punishment as Perillus from Phala- 
ris : 

"Et necis artifices arte perire sua." 

" ' Our martyr was gradually so far recovered as to be 
able to sit up* and to limp a little, when his enemies 
sought to make him waver in the faith, offering him dig- 
nity and office if he would resign his position as bishop, 
and acknowledge the queen to have a double sovereignty, 
ecclesiastical as well as secular. There was sent to him 
for this purpose, among others, Thomas Johns, who is now 
chancellor of this kingdom. But he remained unshaken 
as the Marpesian rock. His only sister, too, Honor Hur- 
ley, was induced to go and tempt him to apostatize, and 
she urgently besought him to yield ; but he, frowning on 
her, ordered her to fall at his knees and humbly beg pardon 
of God and absolution for so grave a crime against God, 
so hurtful to her own soul, and so abhorred by her brother. 

* O' Sullivan says : " A worthy priest named Charles MacMorris, of the Society, skilled in 
medicine, found access to the archbishop, and treated his wounds with such skill that in a few 
days his strength began to return, and in less than a fortnight he was enabled to sit up in bed. 
This priest had himself been confined in prison by the English, but released on account of 
the skill with which he treated some noblemen when suffering from dangerous illness." 



94 Martyrs and Confessors 

"* These governors were about to quit their office, to be 
succeeded by Sir John Perrot, who at this time arrived in 
Dublin ; but, before he entered on office, as it was rumored 
that the Earl of Ormond was hastening to Dublin to con- 
gratulate the new viceroy, and intercede with him for Der- 
mod, Wallop was determined first to slake his hatred in 
the blood of the archbishop. 

" ' As Perrot was to receive the sword of office on Sun- 
day, the feast of the Holy Trinity, and his power would 
then cease, lest his successor might prove more merciful, 
on the preceding Friday,* and at early dawn, as we have 
mentioned, the archbishop was drawn on a hurdle through 
the garden gate to the place where he was hanged, Wal- 
lop himself (as it is said) going before with three or four 
guards ; and there he was hanged in a withey, calling on 
God and forgiving his torturers with all his heart. 

" ' He was taken out of the castle without any noise, 
lest there should be a tumult ; but the Catholics who were 
prisoners there, seeing him going, called out that he was 
innocent ; and, among others, a certain bishop, then a pri- 
soner there, called out aloud that he rather deserved that 
fate for the scandal he feared he had formerly given, but 
that Hurley was an innocent and holy man. Upon which 
the jailer severely flogged him and the others, and so re- 
duced them to silence/ 

" The holy martyr was hanged in a wood near the city, 
and at evening was buried in the half-ruined church of St. 
Kevin ; and it is stated that many miracles have been 



* According to O'Sullivan, he was executed on the 7th June, 1584. William Simon, a 
citizen of London, removed the martyr's body in a wooden urn, and buried it secretly in con- 
secrated ground. Richard, a distinguished musician, celebrated his sufferings and death in a 
plaintive elegy, called " The Fall of the Baron of Slane." Moran says he was in his sixty- 
fifth year, and was executed on the 6th May, and gives as his authority the Littera di Geo- 
ghegan, 4th June, 1584, and letter of Cornelius Laonensis, from Lisbon, 29th October, 1584, 
(History of the Archbishops of Dublin, i. 135.) O'Sullivan is probably inexact, as he often 
is. Mooney also says he suffered " mense Mari ," but the recently published State PaJ>eri 
say he was executed on the 19th June. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 95 

wrought there ; and, in consequence, the old church has 
been restored, and a road opened to it, which is much fre- 
quented by the people, who go to recommend themselves 
to the prayers of the holy martyr."* 



PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON.t 

Ireland, vol. cv. No. 10. 
1583, Oct. 8. 
Indorsed, Sir H. Wallop, and Archbishop of Dublin. 
Dr. Hurley apprehended. 

Addressed — To the Worshipful Robert Beale, supplying 
the place of Her Majesty's Chief Secretary. 

Sir : By our last letters we gave you some inkling of 
the arrival here of one Dr. Hurley, upon intelligence 
whereof we caused so narrow search to be made after 
him, as we found he had been entertained in the house of 
the Baron of Slane, and some others of good account 
within the pale, and from thence was departed (in com- 
pany with Mr. Perse Butler, base son to the Earl of Or- 
mond) into Munster. Whereupon, sending for the Baron 
of Slane, we so dealt with him as he travailed presently to 
the earl for the apprehension of the said Hurley, and, re- 
turning again yesterday, brought him unto us, but as yet 

* Dr. O'Hurley's own suffragan bishop thus speaks of him: " The Archbishop of Cashel 
endured martyrdom in Dublin with most glorious firmness and heroism, and although sub- 
jected to the most dreadful torture, yet could never be induced to subscribe to the iniquitous 
innovations of Elizabeth. He died, fearlessly and gloriously, confessing his faith ; but what 
afflicts me is, that our martyrs are no longer led publicly to execution, but are put to death in 
private, without the presence of the people. It was thus the archbishop was executed, by 
only three soldiers, fearing lest he should exhort and inflame the people to constancy in their 
Christian faith." — Letter of Dr. Cornelius O'Mulrian, ex Archiv. Secret. Vatican, a$. 
Moran. 

tThe original correspondence on the subject of the archbishop's trial between the lords-jus- 
tices in Ireland and the council in England, lately discovered in the State Paper Office, Lon- 
don, throw much light on the whole matter, and so strikingly prove the accuracy of the nar- 
rative of Dr. Roothe that I give them here in extenso. 



96 Martyrs and Confessors 

our leisure hath not served to examine him. What shall 
fall out upon his examination we will by the next advertise 
the Lords at large. In the mean time, it is most certain 
that he had been a leidgervX Rome for a long time, solicit- 
ing all matters that had been there attempted to the pre- 
judice of H. Majesty's proceedings here in this realm, 
and the perturbing of this state. He is nominated by the 
Pope to be Archbishop of Cashel. Thus for the present, 
all things else being in reasonable good quiet, and having 
not further to enlarge, we betake you to the tuition of 
Almighty God. From Dublin, this 8th day of October, 

j 
Ad. Dublin, 
H. Wallop. 



1583. Your assured loving friends, 



PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON. 

Ireland, vol. cv. No. 29. 
Indorsed, 20th Oct., 1583. 

Reed. 29. 

Lords Justices of Ireland, 

Michael Fitzsimons. 

Barnewell's Second Confession. 

Dr. Hurley. 

Addressed — To the Right Honorable Sir Francis Wal- 
singham, Knight, principal Secretary to her Majesty, give 
these at court. 

Michael 1 Fitz- Since your Honor's departure into Scotland 
simons' pardon. we rece i vec [ a letter from the Lords concerning 
one Michael Fitzsimons, the copy whereof we 
send your Honor, here enclosed. Whereby it 
seemeth that besides his flying into France 
without license which he maketh the ground of 



/;/ the Reign of Elizabeth. 97 

his suit for a pardon, their Lordships would 
have him pardoned for any one fault that he 
hath committed against the law here in hope 
of his conformity and dutiful life hereafter. Ac- 
cording to which letter we have called him be- 
fore us, and declared their Lordships' pleasure 
in his behalf, willing him to show any one fault 
wherein he had offended her Majesty's laws, 
and he should have pardon for it according 
their Lordships' direction. But he will not 
enter into any particular with us, but urgeth the 
pardon in general terms. This Fitzsimons is 
well known unto us to be not only an arrogant 
Papist, impossible to be reformed, and a conti- 
nual practiser against the state. So if it please 
your Honor to read the examination of Christo- 
pher Barnewell against Seclgrave and William 
Fitzsimons of this city, your Honor shall find 
that this Michael Fitzsimons was made ac- 
quainted with the whole practice, and that, if 
he could have furnished himself with money, 
he should have been the carrier of the letters 
both to the Pope and the King of Spain, to 
have solicited for more aid ; and, therefore, 
since his offence is to be justified by Barnewell, 
and that he will not enter into the voluntary 
confession of it, it is like he find a guilty con- 
science in divers treasons, and therefore will 
depend upon this letter of the Lords for a re- 
fuge against the first fault wherewith he shall 
be charged. Wherefore, we wish (the quality 
of his offence considered) that we might have a 
revocation of their Lordships' said letter, where- 
by we might be at liberty to deal with him in a 
more severe sort. 



98 Martyrs and Confessors 

Ion°of Bam"- Secondly, your Honor is to understand that 
wdl * about the time of the beginning of your journey 

into Scotland, we sent to the Lord Treasurer 
and your Honor jointly a second voluntary con- 
fession of the aforesaid Christopher Barnewell 
touching 120. In which confession there is one 
Dr. Hurley (by creation of the Pope, Archbishop 
of Cashel) named to have been a practiser at 
Rome about the rebels here, and to have had 
access to Cardinal Comensis, the Pope's secre- 
tary, as in the confession at large appeareth. 
This Hurley, having received letters from Rome 
to divers persons in Ireland, landed at Droyg- 
hadore about six weeks past, and immediately 
grew familiar with the Baron of Slane, and re- 
sorted to his house under pretense of acquaint- 
ance with a base son of the Earl of Ormond's, 
who married the Baron's daughter, and, passing 
some time there, from thence went into Orey- 
lies country to seek some priests of his foreign 
acquaintance, and so into Munster to the Lord 
General, (being a born man under his Lordship,) 
and craving protection at his hands. Which 
being revealed unto us, we so dealt with the 
Baron of Slane that he travailed to the Earl and 
brought the said Hurley hither unto us, where 
we have committed him close prisoner to the 
Castle. At his first apprehension he uttered 
some words to the Baron of Slane as though 
120 and .... were to be charged with these 
late stirs and foreign practices and so the Baron 
gave it forth in secret ; but before his coming to 
us, he had been so well schooled as now he pre- 
tendeth ignorance in all things saving that he 
confesseth that the Viscount of Bathinglas, his 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 99 

brother Richard Eustace, Barnewell, and he, 
were together with Cardinal Comensis, but 
denieth that he saw any such letters, as Barne- 
well in his confession allege th, nor heard any 
matter of such importance. The other justi- 
fieth his former confession, and addeth that the 
doctor was one of the House of Inquisitions, 
which he denieth not. And further the doctor 
confesseth that he had letters from Cardinal 
Sans [Sens] (who is called Protector of Ireland) 
to the Earl of Desmond and others, which letters 
(he saith) he left in France and would not med- 
dle with them. We heartily, therefore, pray 
your Honor that conferring with the Lord 
Treasurer you will procure us resolution upon 
our former joint letter to his Lordship and you 
touching the confession of the said Barnewell, 
how we shall either proceed in it or suppress it, 
and also what course we are to hold with the 
Popish Archbishop and Michael Fitzsimons, and 
so, most glad of your Honor's safe return, we 
commit you to the Lord. 

From Dublin this 20th of October, 1583. 
Your Honor's always at commandment, 
Ad. Dublin, Cane. 

H. Wallop. 



PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON. 

State papers, Ireland No. 7. 

1583, Dec. 10. 

Among other letters directed to us and brought by this 

last passage, we received one from your Honor declaring 

her Majesty's pleasure for the proceeding with Dr. Hurley 



100 Martyrs and Confessors 

by torture or any other severe manner of proceeding to 
gain his knowledge of all foreign practices against her 
Majesty's state, wherein we partly forbore to deal till now, 
because that Mr. Waterhouse (whom we used only in the 
former examinations) was employed in Connaught with 
Sir Nicholas Malbie in searching out the manner of the 
death of the Baron of Leitrim, and being now returned, we 
will enter into the matter again by examination of all such 
as transported Hurley, and such as hosted and entertained 
him after his landing, and will also deal with himself by 
the best means we may. But for that we want here either 
rack or other engine of torture to terrify him, and doubt 
not, but at the time of his apprehension, he was schooled 
to be silent in all causes of weight, we thought that in a 
matter of so great importance and to a person so inward 
with the Pope and his Cardinals, and preferred by them 
to the dignity of an Archbishop, the Tower of London 
should be a better school than the Castle of Dublin, where 
being out of hope of his Irish patrons and favorers he 
might be made more apt to tell the truth, and therefore 
do wish that we had directions to send him thither, which 
we think may be secretly done, as his departure hence 
should not be known, neither be discovered till he came 
thither ; and in the mean season we would not only inform 
ourselves of all that may be gained here out of the exam- 
ination of him and others, but also prepare that Barnewell, 
his accuser, may repair to the court to justify his former 
deposition and other matters against Hurley, wherein we 
pray your Honor to be speedily informed if her Majesty 
please, and so do commit ye to the Lord. 

At Dublin, the ioth of Dec, 1583. 

Yr. Honor's assured at commandment, 

Ad. Dublin, Cane. 

H. Wallop. 

To the Right Hon. Sir Francis Walsingham, Knt, prin- 
cipal secretary to her Majesty, give these. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. ioi 

Indorsed, 10th Dec, 1583. 
From the Lords Justices of Ireland. 
Why they have not proceeded further as yet against 
Hurley, they want instruments of torture. 

They desire the said Hurley may be sent ovei to the 
Tower, and herein crave answer with speed. 



PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON. 

Ireland, vol. civ. No. 381. 
1583, Aug. 1 2th. 

The examination of Christopher Barnewell, of Dundalk„ 
the 1 2th August, 1583. (N.B. The first half of this 
examination is regarding James Fitzmaurice and Roch- 
fort the priest.) Also when he went to Rome, as 
in his other confession is expressed, he saith that, miss- 
ing Richard Eustace at Paris, he went to Rome and there 
found him, at which time there was one Hurley, now 
created Archbishop of Cashel. Richard Eustace carried 
this examinate to the Archbishop, who examined him of 
all matters of Ireland, especially what Lords were in arrest ; 
this examinate told him of all that were in the action. 
Then the Bishop asked of the Earl of Kildare. He 
answered he was in the Castle of Dublin prisoner, and the 
Baron of Delvin with him. Then he asked whether the 
Earl were taken as a companion of the Rebellion or no. 
He answered no ; he served against the Viscount and be- 
fore that against James Fitzmaurice. Then the Bishop 
took him with him to the Pope's Secretary, called Cardinal 
Comensis, to whom he told the same tale. Then the 
Cardinal saith, " Who would trust an Irishman ? The 
Earl promised to take our part, and shrunk his shoulders 



102 Martyrs and Confessors 

into his ears." The Archbishop said that he thought the 
Earl never promised that he would take arms. Then the 
Cardinal chaffed, and said, " Wilt thou tell me ?" And 
then he went into his study and fetched out two writings, 
the one a great writing whereunto the Bishop said the 
most part of the lords and gentlemen of Ulster, Munster, 
and Connaught had subscribed ; the other was a letter 
from the Earl of Kildare alone, which the Cardinal showed 
to the Archbishop as rebuking him for not believing him. 
All this the examinate saith was expounded to him both 
by the said Bishop and Richard Eustace, and he saith 
further that the Cardinal, in the end of that conference, 
said, " Do you think that we would have trusted to James 
Fitzmaurice, or to Stewkely, or to all these lords, (which 
subscribed the great letter,) unless we had received the 
letter from the Earl of Kildare ?" And then the Cardinal 
turned away and told the Archbishop that the Pope had no 
money for none of their nation. He saith further that all 
the Irishmen in Rome cursed the Earl of Kildare for breach 
of his promise, and prayed for the Viscount and the Earl 
of Desmond and all other confederates. 

(Signed) Christopher Barnewell. 

The said Christopher Barnewell was examined before us. 
Ad. Dublin, Cane. 

H. Wallop. 

Ed. Waterhouse. 



PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON. 

Ireland, Eliz. vol. cviii. 
1584, March 8th. 
Extract of the last letters touching Hurley. 

7th March, 1584. With an extract of Hurley's exam- 
ination, as also of other examinations that touch Hurley. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 103 

The best lawyers there doubt whether he can be found 
guilty, his treasons having been committed in foreign 
parts, and the law not stretching in this behalf so far there 
as it doth in England. They think it better, Hurley hav- 
ing neither lands nor goods, that he be executed by mar- 
tial law rather than by any ordinary trial. 

To have resolutions herein from hence. 

5 th March, 1584. With the letters of Hurley to the 
Pope, intercepted since his torture. 

Hurley and such-like, favored by great Potentates, 
they desire to know the acceptation of their travail in this 
and in the like. 

Never heard answer to their letters to my Lord Trea- 
surer and me with the examination of Barnewell. 

They will desist if their travail be not acceptable, know- 
ing how dangerous it is. 



PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON. 

1584, March 7th. 
From ye Lords Justices of Ireland, touching Dr. Hurley. 

Addressed— To the Right Hon ble . Sir Francis Wal- 
singham, K*. Principal Secretary to Her Majesty, and of 
Her Highness's Most Hon ble . Privy Council. 

May it please your Honor. Since the last term, which 
the other general affairs here would give us leave, we have 
at several times examined Dr. Hurley, with whom albeit 
we dealt by all the good means we could to draw him to con- 
fess his knowledge, not only of any practice of disturbance 
pretended against the land in particular, but also of any 



104 Martyrs and Confessors 

other foreign conspiracy whatsoever against her Majesty 
for England, or any other parts of her dominions ; and in 
that point we omitted not to give him a taste that so far 
forth as he would sincerely and liberally discover all that 
he knew of others, her Majesty's mercy might be extended 
to repair such faults as himself had committed. Yet, he 
retaining his former obstinacy and evasions, we found 
himself far off from that truth which we expected, and are 
not ignorant that he can declare if he list ; yea, he would 
not confess that he brought from Rome the Pope's letters 
of comfort, addressed to the Earl of Desmond, Viscount 
of Baltinglas, and other rebels, till he knew by us that we 
had intercepted the said letters, with other testimonials 
of his consecration, and were already possessed of them. 
So as not finding that easy manner of examination to do 
any good, we made commission to Mr. Waterhouse and 
Mr. Secretary Fenton to put him to the torture, such as 
your Honor advised us, which was to toast his feet against 
the fire with hot boots. His confessions, as well upon the 
torture as at sundry times before, we have extracted and 
sent herewith to your Honor, together with all other de- 
clarations, both of the Lord of Slane and others, which 
have any community with Hurley's cases, and which we 
have at several times drawn from the parties themselves 
by way of examination ; by which we doubt not but your 
Honor will discern how many ways Hurley is to be over- 
taken with treason in his own person, and with what bad 
mind he came into Ireland, instructed from Rome to poi- 
son the hearts of the people with disobedience to her Ma- 
jesty's Government, which was not unlike to put the realm 
in danger of a new revolt if he had hot been intercepted 
in time. Even so we desire your Honor to consider how 
he may speedily receive his deserts, so as not only his own 
evil may die with himself, and thereby the realm delivered 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 105 

of a perilous member, but also his punishment to serve for 
an example ad terrorem to many others, who we find by 
his own confessions are prepared at Rome to run the 
same course both here and for England. And herein we 
thought good to remember your Honor by way of our 
opinion that, considering how obstinate and wilful we find 
him every way, if he should be referred to a public trial, 
his impudent and clamorous denial might do great harm 
to the ill-affected here, who in troth have no small admira- 
tion of him. And yet, having had conference with some 
of the best lawyers in the land, we find that they make a 
scruple to arraign him here, for that his treasons were 
committed in foreign parts, the statute in that behalf be- 
ing not here, as it is in England. And therefore we 
think it not amiss (if it be allowed of there) to have him 
executed by martial law, against which he can have no 
just challenge, for that he hath neither lands nor goods, 
and as by that way may be avoided many harms, which 
by his presence standing at ordinary trial, and retaining 
still his former impudence and negative protestations, he 
may do to the people. So also it may be a mean to pre- 
vent danger to us, and the said Waterhouse and Mr. Se- 
cretary, that have from the beginning interposed our- 
selves, not only in his apprehension, but also in all his ex- 
aminations, if (as it is most likely) he should break out 
and exclaim to the people that he was troubled for some 
noblemen of his country, whom your Honor may find by 
the extracts now sent chargeable with more than suspi- 
cion of confederacy in the late rebellion, whereof we 
humbly pray your Honor to be careful in our behalf, con- 
sidering in how little safety we live here for the like ser- 
vices we have already done to her Majesty ; and so eft- 
soons desiring your Honor's speedy resolution whether he 
shall be passed to martial law or not, for what purpose 
we have sent this bearer, Mr. Randall, and to return with 



106 Martyrs and Confessors 

your answer with all the diligence he may, we humbly 
take our leave of your Honor. 

At Dublin, the 7th day of March, 1584. 

Your Honor's at commandment, 
Ad. Dublin, Cane. 

H. Wallop. 



PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON. 

Ireland, vol. cviii. 1584, March 8. 

Indorsed, 8th March, 1584. 

The Lords Justices of Ireland. 

Dr. Hurley. 

Addressed — To ye Right Honorable Sir Francis ■ Wal- 
singham, Knt., Principal Secretary to Her Majesty, give 
these. 

It may please your Honor, as in our other letter to your 
Honor, of the 7th of this present, we have declared our pro- 
ceedings by torture with Dr. Hurley, having sent you the 
abstract of his examinations, together with the Baron of 
Slane's, John Dillon's, and others, to be considered of by 
your Honor, and used in such sort as shall seem good unto 
you, so also have we herewith sent the copies of such let- 
ters as since the writing of our former letters we have 
intercepted, being written since his torture — the one to the 
Earl of Ormond, and the other to a kinsman of his own in 
this town, serving Dr. Forth, who should have practised 
for him ; which letters were brought to our hands by the 
fidelity of Sylvester Cooley, the constable, and the good 
handling of one of the warders, who hath the keeping of 
Hurley. By those letters your Honor may discover what 
favor these Romish runagates have with our great Potentate 
here. They that will not see let them be blind still ; and 
it shall suffice us to have discharged our duties herein as 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 107 

before, in Barnewell's examination, formerly sent unto the 
Lord Treasurer, and your Honor, concerning the Earl of 
Kildare and the Baron of Delvin, confirmed now by 
Hurley's own speech to the Baron of Slane, as in the 
Baron's confession appeareth, whereof, nevertheless, we 
never had any answer, which maketh us somewhat doubt- 
ful how to proceed in these causes, not knowing how our 
doings in that behalf are there thought of. Beseeching 
your Honor to let us understand how both these, and the 
former also, are there taken, and be directed which course 
we shall hold therein, or otherwise, if your Honor find but 
small accompaniment to be made thereof, that it will 
please you to yield us your good advice for the staying of 
our hands, and not further to stir those coals to scorch 
ourselves, knowing how dangerous it is for us to busy 
ourselves in this sort, with setting these matters abroad 
here, if, when we have, according to our duties, presented 
the same unto your Honor's there, in lieu of backing and 
good countenance from thence, our doings shall be dis- 
covered ; and so, craving by the next despatch to be satis- 
fied from your Honor herein, we humbly take our leave. 
From Dublin, this 8th of March, 1583. 

Your Honor's always at commandment, 

Ad. Dublin, Cane. 
Sir Franc. Walsingham. H. Wallop. 



PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON. 
State Papers, Ireland, No. 12, vol. iii. 1584, July 9. 

It may please your Honor, having by your letter unto 
us of the 29th of April, received her Majesty's resolution 
for the course to be holden with Hurley, namely, that we 
should proceed to his execution (if it might be) by ordinary 
trial by law, or otherwise by martial law, and having there- 



108 Martyrs and Confessors 

upon caused the lawyers and judges here to set down their 
resolute opinion in that matter, which was, that he could 
not be tried by course of her Majesty's common laws, 
as may appear by the copy enclosed, we thought meet ac- 
cording to your direction to proceed with him by the other 
way, and for our farewell, two days before we delivered 
over the sword, being the 19th of the last, (with the 
consent of the Lord-Deputy,) we gave warrant to the 
knight-marshal in her Majesty's name to do execution 
upon him, which accordingly was performed, and thereby 
the realm well rid of a most pestilent member, who, 
notwithstanding the appearing of his treasons, even until 
he was given to understand her Majesty's resolute pleasure, 
and our determination in that behalf, was continually in 
hope and (in a manner) in an assured expectation of some 
means to be wrought for his enlargement, if he might have 
found that favor, to have had his time prolonged but to the 
end of our government. Thus much we thought good to 
signify unto your Honor of our proceedings in that behalf, 
to be imparted unto her Majesty and the Lords, as your 
Honor shall see cause, and in the meantime do receive no 
small comfort by your Honor's signification of her Majesty's 
good reception and allowance of our careful and zealous 
travail in that matter. 

Wherein we have done but our duties, so we will not, 
God willing, at any time omit to perform the same in like 
sort as occasion shall be offered, especially in such mat- 
ters as so highly concern the glory of God, and her Majes- 
ty's crown and dignity, to whom we accompt we owe, not 
only all our endeavors, but also our lives and ourselves, 
and so, for the present, we betake your Honor to the tui- 
tion of the Almighty. 

Dublin, this 9th of July, 1584. 

Ad. Dublin, Cane. 

H. WalloPc 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 109 

Directed — To the Right Honorable Sir Francis Wal- 
singham, Knt., Principal Secretary to Her Majesty, give 
these at Court. 

Indorsed, 1584, 19th July, from the Lord Chancellor and 
Sir H. Wallop. 

Enclosing No. 121. 

Our humble duties recommended unto your Honors'. 
Having, according to your Lordships' direction, conferred 
whether treasons committed in the parts beyond the seas 
may by her Majesty's laws be tried within this realm, it 
appeareth unto us that before the statute made in the 35th 
year of our late Sovereign Lord King Henry VIII. it was 
doubtful in England whether such foreign treasons might 
be tried within that realm, for remedy whereof the said 
statute was made and provided, and in the preamble there- 
of is set down, which statute is not confirmed nor establish- 
ed in this realm, wherefore, and for that we find no prece- 
dent for any such trial, and that the rules of common law 
appoint no ordinary trials for things beyond the seas, our 
opinion is that things committed without this realm may 
not be tried here by order of her Majesty's laws, and so we 
humbly take our leave. 

Dublin, the 1st of June, 1584. 

Your Honor's humble, to command, 

Robert Dillon. 

Lucas Dillon. 

Edmond Butler. 

Wilton Bathe. 

Edward Fitzsimons. 

George Dormer. 

Richard Barlinge. 

Richard Sedgrave. 



110 Martyrs and Confessors 

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON. 
Ireland, Eliz. vol. cix. 1584, April 14th. 

{Extract of Indorsement}} Do expect answer of that 
formerly they have written hither of Hurley, and the E. 
Kildare. 

Addressed — To the Right Honorable Sir Francis Wal- 
singham, Knt, Principal Secretary to Her Majesty, give 
these. 

{Extract.) 

In our late letters touching Hurley, we earnestly press- 
ed her Majesty and their Lordships' resolution for our pro : 
ceedings with him, which eftsoons we humbly beseech your 
Honor to hasten as much as you may. In like sort we 
have long expected their Lordships' pleasure touching 
that which formerly we wrote concerning the Earl of Kil- 
dare, etc. 

From Dublin, this 14th of April, 1584. 

Your Honor's always at commandment, 
Ad. Dublin, Cane. 

H. Wallop. 



PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON. 

State Papers, vol. cix. No. 66. 
1584, April 28. 

After my hearty commendations to your Lordships, 
your late letters of the 7th and 8th of last month by Mr. 
Alverie Randolph, together with the extract of the exami- 
nations off-hand of others, being of some length, and the 
time otherwise here full of great causes, I could not before 
now so impart to her Majesty as I might withal know her 
mind touching the same for your Lordships' further direc- 
tion. Wherefore she having at length resolved, I have, 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 1 1 1 

accordingly by her commandment, to signify her Majes- 
ty's pleasure unto you touching Hurley, which is this : 
that the man being so notorious and ill a subject, as ap- 
peareth by all the circumstances of his course he is, do 
proceed if it may be to his execution by ordinary trial of 
him for it ; howbeit, in case you shall find the effect of his 
causes doubtful by reason of the affections of such as 
shall be his jury, and for the supposal conceived by the 
lawyers of that country that he can hardly be found 
guilty for his treason committed in foreign parts against 
her Majesty, then her pleasure is you take a shorter way 
with him by martial law. So as you may see it is referred 
to your discretion whether of these two ways your Lord- 
ships will take with him ; and the man being so resolute to 
reveal no more matter, it is thought meet to have no fur- 
ther tortures used against him, but that you proceed 
forthwith to his execution in manner aforesaid. As for 
her Majesty's good acceptation of your careful travail in 
this matter of Hurley, you need nothing to doubt, and, 
for your better assurance thereof, she has commanded me 
to let your Lordships understand that, as well in all other 
the like as in this case of Hurley, she cannot but greatly 
allow and commend your doings. And touching the mat- 
ters of Sedgrave and Fitzsimons, whose trial for treason 
the city of Dublin claimeth by their privileges whereof 
you writ in October last, so it is that the best lawyers 
here have delivered their opinion against the claim of that 
city, and therefore Sir John (Perrot) before his departure 
shall have directions to proceed accordingly with these 
persons after his arrival with you. 

Indorsed, 28th April, 1584. 

To the Lords Justices. 

How to proceed against Dr. Hurley, 

By Mr. Randolph. 



112 Martyrs and Confessors 

DAME ELEANOR BIRMINGHAM. 

I give her life from Dr. Roothe : 

"There lived in Dublin a widow of a generous soul, 
named Eleanor Birmingham, relict of Bartholomew Baal.* 
She was worthy of honor, according to the saying of St. 
Paul, ' Honor widows who are truly widows,' and have 
learnt to govern their own house, and to make a return of 
duty to their parents ; who, being widows indeed and 
desolate, trust in God, and continue in supplications and 
prayer night and day. And such was this widow of whom 
I write, ' for she that liveth in pleasures is dead while she is 
living ;' but she was not such, but blameless, having care 
of her own, especially those of her house. That she had 
testimony of her good works, and brought up children, 
and ministered to them that suffered tribulation, and dili- 
gently followed every good work, all who knew her testify. 
How earnestly and sedulously she did so I will briefly 
relate. 

" How diligently, during all her widowhood, she turned 
to the Lord in prayer may be known from this, that be- 
sides her daily prayers, morning and evening, no day pass- 
ed in which she did not devote some hours, spared from 
the care of her household and the other labors of Martha, 
to the reciting of the rosary and penitential psalms. She 
never missed hearing Mass on the feasts, and also on all 
days of devotion when possible ; and that she might be 
more certain of being able to do so, and even to have a 
daily Mass, although the times were evil and the rulers 
persecuted the Catholics, she entertained in her house a 
Catholic priest, to whom she supplied food, .clothing, lodg- 
ing, and an annual honorarium, in order that there might 
always be there a priest to say Mass, administer the sacra- 

* Or Ball. The habit of calling wives by their maiden name, as Dr. Roothe does here and 
slsewhere, still remains among the peasantry in many districts of Ireland. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 113 

ments, and pray for her and her family. She was several 
times accused of this before the Privy Council ; and at 
last pursuivants were sent who arrested her as she was 
hearing Mass, together with the priest who was at the 
altar. They were both hurried, guarded by an armed 
party, before the viceroy and the chancellor and a few of 
the council ; and this was done so hurriedly that the priest 
was not given time to lay aside his sacred vestments ; and 
he, clothed in the sacrificial ornaments, and she, borne 
down with the weight of years, were carried off in a cart 
to prison ; and that this might be the more insulting, the 
priest, clad in the sacred vestments, was paraded through 
the streets and held up to ridicule. But though this sight 
moved the laughter of the Protestants, yet it the more 
confirmed the Catholics in their faith : as in the time of 
the Emperor Claudius, when the holy martyrs, Marius, 
Martha, and Audifax, were paraded through Rome with 
their hands cut off, and hung round their necks, the sight 
roused the Catholics of Rome to piety and constancy in 
the faith. The pious matron was despoiled of the sacred 
ornaments, the chalice, paten, and all other things, on 
which these fanatical spoilers greedily seized and turned 
them to profane uses. She lay in prison for a considera- 
ble time, until, having smoothed the way by bribes, and 
the minds of the king's ministers being mollified by the 
intercession of some nobles, she was set free, and allowed 
to return to her house. 

"After her deliverance she resumed her accustomed 
way of life, spending her time in prayer and other pious 
exercises, wherein she tasted and saw how sweet is the 
Lord. And she ever generously relieved the wants of the 
poor, and this the more freely out of gratitude to God for 
her deliverance. In her house she was a pattern to all of 
integrity and chastity, of piety and innocence, of modesty 
and virtue to her servants, of purity to virgins, of conti- 



I' 1 4 Martyrs and Confessors 

nence to widows, to all a light of religion, of faith, and of 
holiness. 

" For this reason noble ladies from both far and near, 
who cared for the bringing up of their daughters in solid 
piety, sent them to her to be educated, and she so brought 
up those children entrusted to her as to make them hand- 
maids of virtue, so that they might say of her what St. 
Basil writes of his grandmother, St. Macrina, where he 
says that, when a child, he was taught the Christian doc- 
trine by her, wherefore he calls her his nurse in the faith, 
and rejoices that he retained the faith which he nad re- 
ceived like pure milk from her. Many now in Ireland 
may truly say of this holy matron that the dew of piety 
was instilled by her in their earliest education ; and many, 
also, that at a more advanced age she renewed its fresh- 
ness in their souls. 

" But her heart was grievously afflicted by the hardness 
of heart of her eldest son, Walter Baal, who from commu- 
nication with the innovators, had imbibed their pernicious 
errors. She sought by all means to purge from him that 
leaven of malice ; she prayed day and night, and besought 
the divine goodness to cure the malady of his soul, and 
besought the prayers of others for the same end. There 
was no priest, secular or regular, or bishop or other per- 
son, renowned for sanctity, whom, when she had the oppor- 
tunity, she did not beseech to pray for his conversion. It 
seemed as if St. Monica were again alive, and renewing her 
prayers for the conversion of St. Augustine to the Catholic 
faith from which he had wandered. But Monica was hap- 
pier, since she at length obtained her request and recov- 
ered a son, not only a Catholic, but a most intrepid de- 
fender of the faith. But the unworthy son of this worthy 
Eleanor was a son of Belial, without price he served Baal 
and adored him, and became a * Nabal ; according to his 
name, he is a fool/ (i Kings xxv. 25,) and his folly he carried 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 115 

down with him into the grave ; and while many others 
by means of this matron were led back from their errors, 
he hardened his heart, and obstinately died in his blind- 
ness. 

" But the crowning stroke of his wickedness was that, 
not content with himself wallowing in the mud of error, he 
bitterly persecuted his mother to make her share in the 
same. Being made mayor of the city of Dublin,* he was 
so inhuman toward the mother that bore him, that al- 
though she was decrepit with age and no longer able to 
walk from weakness, when all his attempts to draw her 
into conformity with the established religion had failed, he 
had her carried to prison in a chair. This trial she pa- 
tiently bore, and leaving behind her .a sweet odor of con- 
stancy, longanimity, and unspotted faith, happily slept in 
the Lord, in prison, about the year 1584."! — Roothe, De 
Processu Martyriali. 



* Walter Ball was Mayor of Dublin in 1580, having been sheriff in 1572. — Ware's Annals, 
p. 168. If, therefore, she died in prison in 1584, this, her second imprisonment must have 
lasted between three and four years. 

t As an introduction to the notices of Eleanor Birmingham and Margery Barnewall, Dr. 
Roothe says : 

"As I have thus given a few examples of constancy, taken from every rank of the male sex, 
both ecclesiastical and secular, primates, archbishops, bishops, abbots, deans, archdeacons, 
and other priests of different orders, of whom I spoke in my catalogue ; and, as I there made 
mention of illustrious women, if now I give two examples, one of a married woman and the 
other of a virgin, I shall not seem wholly to have omitted the sex. I shall, therefore, here 
briefly gives- a few particulars, first of a married woman, that is a widow, and then of a virgin." 

We must therefore take these two lives (see Anno 1583) as only two examples out of many, 
and instances of what daily befell Catholic women in Ireland in those days. 

The end of Dame Margery's unworthy son, Walter Baal, is thus related in a MS. in the 
Burgundian library: 

" In the same year (1599,) Walter Baal, truly a man of Belial, a senator of Dublin, so im- 
pious a son that he dragged his aged mother by force into the congregation of the impious and 
sacrilegious, a hunter after the anointed priests of the Lord, one day, with a crowd of fol- 
lowers, went to seek for a certain Franciscan father, and a father of the Society of Jesus, 
whom he just missed. On his return home, disappointed, he was seized with sudden 
madness, and breathing blasphemies, he departed to join the other persecutors of priests." 
— MS. 2139, entitled Magna Supplicia a Pcrsecutoribus aliquot Catliolicorum in Hibemia 
Sumpta. 



Ii6 Martyrs and Confessors 

Anno 1585. 

RIGHT REV. MURTAGH O'BRIEN, 

Bishop of Emly, was appointed to the see of Emly, on 
24th January, 1567* In a letter of Dr. Cornelius O'Mul- 
rian, preserved in the Vatican archives,! immediately after 
the eulogy of the heroic martyr of Cashel, (Dr. O'Hurley,) 
is added : " The Bishop of Emly, who is equally constant 
in the faith, is at present confined in the Dublin dun- 
geons ; they are now preparing for him, too, the tin boots, 
and intend to apply the fiery ordeal, as they did with the 
archbishop, that thus, if possible, they may compel him 
to renounce his religion." This was on the 29th October, 
1584. Of his subsequent sufferings no record has been 
preserved : but Moohey chronicles his death in prison in 
the following year. J Philadelphus also mentions his death 
in prison at Dublin, but puts it at 1586. 



MOST REV. RICHARD CREAGH, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 

I give first his life, as written by Dr. Roothe, and 'then 
such additional particulars as can be drawn from other 
sources. 

" NO'TES ON THE LIFE AND DEATH OF RICHARD CREAGH, 
ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 

" This great ruler of the Church of Ireland was a noble 
champion of the Catholic faith, and foremost among its 
defenders and restorers in his native land. He was born 
at Limerick, the son of respectable but not distinguished 

* Dr. Moran, Archbishops of Dublin, p. 136. 

t Ibid. 

X Mooney, p. 95. In another passage (p. 69) he also mentions his death in this year, (al- 
though the name, probably through a mistake, of Moonev's copyist, looks like Moriartus 
O'Kenny.) 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 117 

citizens of that city, Nicholas Creagh and Joanna White. 
That city is situated in the province of Munster, remarka- 
ble for its site and its cultivation : it is surrounded by 
walls and washed by the river Shannon, the greatest of 
the rivers of Ireland ; the goodness of its port invites the 
citizens to commerce, and, in consequence, the most 
honorable of its citizens for the greater part bring up their 
sons to trade. Thus it happened that the young Richard 
was by his parents placed in a commercial house to learn 
business, as was St. Francis by his father ; and to acquire 
a knowledge of such articles as were most in demand. 
Among such was saffron, which at that time was much 
used by the Irish for dyeing, cooking, and medicine. 
One day young Creagh perceived that the bags in which 
the saffron was kept were damp, (as ofttimes happens with 
that oily flower,) and fearing lest there should be any fraud 
in that dampness — for he had learned in the divine law 
that adulterating goods and unjust weights are an abomina- 
tion to the Lord — he placed the bags in the sun to dry. 
His mind was troubled by the thought of the dangers to 
which his soul would be exposed in trading in the goods 
of this world, for the Lord had destined him for another 
business, that of saving souls, that he should make fine 
linen and sell it, and deliver a girdle to the Chananite ; 
and should be as a merchant's ship, bringing his bread 
from afar. Nor was he of those who, being brought up in 
garments of saffron, embraced the dunghill, but rather of 
those who deemed saffron and cinnamon and all other 
precious spices as dirt that he might gain Christ. He de- 
termined, therefore, to abandon the balance that he might 
embrace the cross ;* and, having with some difficulty ob- 
tained the consent of his parents, he got his discharge 
from his master, and, bidding adieu to the business of this 

* "Relicto igitur croco ut se ad crucem Christi pararet melius." 



Ii8 Martyrs and Confessors 

world, devoted himself to study and piety in the hope of 
an abundant return, as he remembered the treasure hid- 
den in a field, and the pearl of great price spoken of in the 
gospel ; wherefore he sold all he had to buy it. 

" Freed from dealing in spices, he yet gave a sweet odor 
of piety, like cinnamon and balsam, and to him might be 
applied what St. Basil said: 'As sweet ointments diffuse 
through the air a sweet odor, which refreshes those 
who breathe it, so a good man is useful and agreeable to all 
that dwell with him,' as was proved in him. But I must 
now relate more at length the stages by which he was led 
by divine Providence. 

"As soon as he had learned in Ireland the rudiments of 
the Latin language, he went to Belgium, where in the 
great University of Louvain he studied letters, and having 
completed his course of philosophy, and taken the degree 
of master of arts, he studied sacred theology with all care, 
and after several years' study attained the degree of 
bachelor in theology.* 

" Having taken this degree, he determined to return to 
his native land, then, alas ! overrun with weeds and 
briers caused by the schism and heresy under Elizabeth, 
(for her Catholic sister was then dead ;) error was sown 
broadcast all through the kingdom, more especially in his 
native city, where he desired to root out the bad and sow 
the good seed. Being now a priest, he labored zealously, 



* Note A.— The following reference to our archbishop occurs in the Records of Louvain, 
published by De Ram in 1861. (Rerum Lovanieiisium, libri 14, auctore Jac. Molano, 1582.) 

" Richard Crews, a native of Limerick, in Ireland, having obtained a free bourse frcm the 
almoner of Charles V., studied arts as a convictor in domo Standonica, and afterward theology 
in the Pontifical College, and in the year 1555 took his degree of bachelor. He was subse- 
quently made Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of Ireland ; and, being taken prisoner in the 
persecution of Elizabeth, miraculously escaped from prison in the year 1565, and came to Lou- 
vain, where he was received with great kindness by Michael Banis, President of the Pontifical 
College," founded by Adrian VI., now called College du Pape. 

Dr. Creagh, in his examination, says he was educated " at the Emperor Charles's and other 
good men's costs." 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 119 

exhorting in private and preaching in public, and adminis- 
tering the sacraments ; and warning all against the oath 
of the queen's usurped ecclesiastical supremacy, and 
against unlawfully communicating in divine things with 
the schismatics, and he withdrew many from these two 
snares of the soul. 

"And as nothing remains so firmly fixed in the mind as 
what is learned in youth, {Quint, lib. i. cap. i.,) he gave 
whatever time he could spare from the duties of his sacred 
office to teaching youth and bringing them up in virtue, 
not unmindful of what St. Irenaeus wisely observed, the 
knowledge of ' what we have learned in youth strengthens 
with our growth, and is firmly fixed in our mind.' ' A 
young man according to his way, even when he is old, he 
will not depart from it.' (Prov. xxii. 6.) He opened a 
school and taught at once letters and religion to children 
and youth and all who came. For, as the father of Roman 
eloquence says, 'What better service can we do the state 
than to teach youth ?' For as the ruin of cities and states 
follows the neglect of this duty, so does their prosperity 
from its fulfilment. For how shall the state flourish, 
unless its governors be good ; and how can magistrates 
be good, unless the citizens from whom they are chosen 
be good ? Nor can they be such, unless in their youth 
they be well brought up. Grievously did our forefathers 
offend in this respect, by neglecting the education of 
their children. But far more grievously do our modern 
rulers offend, who devote all their care to poisoning the 
mind of youth, both by infusing the poison of error into 
the teaching of youth, and by prohibiting Catholic schools, 
in which youth would be taught both literature and virtue. 

" Richard therefore labored with solicitude and zeal to 
teach youth, to form their plastic minds to the orthodox 
faith, and to endure sufferings for Christ. After some 
time, however, he determined to leave Ireland, urged by 



120 Martyrs and Confessors 

the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which makes men deem 
all that they have done nothing while yet anything re 
mains to do ; and which made him, although wholly 
devoted to promoting the Catholic faith, consider he was 
not yet a perfect follower of Christ, and desire a more 
^perfect way ; and partly because he was worn out with 
labor, partly because he desired to advance more in sacred 
studies, and to follow a stricter rule of life, he proceeded 
to Catholic countries, and finally to Rome.* Here he was 
known and esteemed by Pope Pius V., who forbade him to 
enter a regular order, as he purposed, until he should learn 
more of the will of his holiness ; but the pontiff, although 
unknown to him, had already determined to send him back 
to Ireland, to strengthen and console its inhabitants, so 



* Note B. — The account which we gather, chiefly from the archbishop's examination in 
London, is fuller. I take it from an excellent sketch of his life, given in the Rambler of 
April, 1853, (by Rev. D. McCarthy,) from which I shall also make several other extracts ; the 
writer does not appear to have seen the life by Roothe. The details in the life by Roothe are 
fuller and more authentic than any others, but he has fallen into some not unnatural errors as 
to the chronology of the archbishop's life, and has transposed his trials and escapes ; placing 
his trial in Ireland before his escape from the Tower of London, whereas it occurred subse- 
quently. 

It will make the narrative clearer if I here give a summary of the dates of his life : 
1525. — The archbishop was born probably in this year 

1548. — About this year went to Louvain ; he was there seven or eight years. 
1555. — Took his degree of bachelor of divinity at Louvain, and soon after returned to 

Limerick. 
1557. — This year Hugh Lacy, the Catholic bishop, was restored to the see of Limerick, and 

as Dr. Creagh came to Limerick under him, it must have been about this year. 
1558. — Elizabeth succeeded, and the persecution began. 

1560. — The Nuncio Wolfe arrived in Limerick, charged with providing for the vacant sees. 
1562. — In August, Dr. Creagh left Limerick for Rome by direction of the Nuncio. 
1563. — January, he arrived in Rome. 
1564. — He was consecrated archbishop in April, and set out on his journey to Ireland on 

horseback ; in October, he reached London, and some time later landed in Ireland, 

and was soon after arrested and sent to London. 
1565. — January 18th, committed to the Tower. He was interrogated on the 23d February 

and 23d March, and escaped from prison on the octave of Easter Sunday, as related 

by the letter of Dr. Southwell and Father Navarchus. He returned to Ireland 

either the end of this year or the beginning of 
1566. — In August of this year he had an interview with Shane O'Neill. 
1567. — 8th May, he was taken prisoner in Connaught ; in August, he was tried in Dublin, and 

acquitted, but kept in custody, and escaped soon after ; was retaken before the end 

of the year, and sent to London, and lodged in the Tower, where— 
1585.— He died on the 14th October. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 121 

sorely tried for their faith ; and, to give more scope to his 
zeal, to consecrate him Archbishop of Armagh and Primate 
of all Ireland ; for that see was then vacant by the death 
of his illustrious and most reverend predecessor, James 
Dowdell, who died, about the same time as Queen Mary 
and Cardinal Pole, in England, whither he had gone about 
some affairs of his church. In vain he alleged, in order to 
escape the burden to be laid upon him, the dangers of 
the journey and the difficulty of entering Ireland ; but as 
soon as he was consecrated, animated by the Holy Ghost, 
he crossed the sea, and, leaving behind the storms of ocean, 
encountered fiercer storms on land.* He had hardly 
landed and proceeded a few days on his journey, when he 
was seized by the enemies of the faith and carried to 
Dublin and thrown into prison. After he had lain there 
some time, he fled, together with his jailer.f What 
further troubles he passed through I will relate as far as I 
have learned. 

" Escaped from chains, he fled across the sea, to breathe 
in freedom among Catholics for a short time, and prepare 
for fresh combats. After he had a little restored his 
strength, having received an intimation from the holy 
father, the primate returned a second time to Ireland, 
and, while watching over his flock, he was again seized 
and brought before the viceroy and council in Dublin, 
where he was accused of high treason, as a vagabond and 
transgressor of the laws, a contemner of the statutes of 
the kingdom, an escaped criminal, and worthy of the se- 
verest punishment. Jurors were called, who, according to 
ancient custom, were to decide on his guilt. The jurors 
were sworn before the royal tribunal, and, having heard 
from the judge the heads of the accusation and the evi- 
dence, were to pronounce on the fact. The archbishop, 

* See Note B, p. 120. 

^ This is a mistake. His escape -with his jailer was from his later imprisonment in 1567. 



122 Martyrs and Confessors 

confiding in the goodness of his cause, boldly pleaded be- 
fore the jurors, proved his innocence, and explained the 
causes of his arrest and his escape. He acknowledged 
that he was a Catholic, and a Catholic bishop, but guilty 
of no crime ; that he had not broken forcibly out of prison, 
but had fled with his jailer to save his life. He prayed 
them to remember that with them rested the life or death 
of an innocent man : if they condemned the innocent, they 
would have to answer to the divine judgment ; that his 
mortal life, but their immortal life, was in the balance. 
And as the law allows the accused a certain number of 
peremptory challenges to the jurors, but, if he exceed the 
number, condemns him to what is called the peine forte et 
dure, that is, to be crushed to death beneath a weight, he 
challenged some peremptorily and some for cause, and in 
all things acted with wisdom and prudence, neither omit- 
ting any just means of defence nor in aught transgressing 
the law — no easy matter in so intricate a business. The 
judge, in charging the jurors, enlarged at great length on 
what he called the atrocity of the crime, that they might 
have the less hesitation in finding him guilty. After they 
had heard his address and the evidence, they retired to dis- 
cuss the facts and decide on their interlocutory sentence, 
which is called the verdict. There ensued a long discus- 
sion among them ; and, as the law directs that the jurors 
may not return to their homes until they have agreed on 
their sentence and it has been announced by their leader, 
they were so long without coming to a decision, some being 
for the accused and some against him, that they remained 
for several days shut up on a small allowance of bread and 
water, until they should agree. The foreman of the jurors, 
who was for an acquittal, had for some time suffered much 
from dysentery ; and all physicians are agreed that nothing 
is worse for such a complaint than cold and uncooked 
food, yet, supported by a sense of justice, his spirit upheld 



hi the Reign of Elizabeth. 123 

the weakness of his body, and, far from suffering, he was 
better and freer from the disease after than before his se- 
clusion. At length the jurors returned a verdict of not 
guilty, but were in consequence themselves thrown into 
prison and fined. The archbishop was sent to London, 
and thrust into an obscure cell in the Tower of London, 
which was called ' the whale's room.' The place was very 
dark and shut out from the light of the sun, and the only 
light allowed to the prisoner was as much of a tallow can- 
dle as his jailers thought would enable him to eat his 
food.* But he, thinking more of the food of the soul than 
of the body, in order to have light to read his prayers out 
of a book which he had concealed, made a species of rude 
candles out of strips of his shirt steeped in the fat of the 
meat given him for food. After some time, however, he 
was removed from this den into a larger and more light- 
some room in the same tower, in which he could breathe 
freer and purer air and enjoy the light, not as in his for- 
mer cell, whither not even a ray of light ever penetrated. 
Here he remained for some time ; and though afflicted in 
many ways, and deprived of all human consolation, he was 
not abandoned by God nor weakened in mind, for he 
placed his confidence not in the arm of the flesh, nor in 
the vanity of this world, but in the light and source of all 
consolation, whose streams do not fail ; his hope was not 
in riches nor in power, but in the aid of God, whose aid 
never fails those who rest in the testimony of a good con- 
science — those who love not the world, but God. In so 
great a cause he was neither slack nor timid ; and as pov- 
erty and suffering are said to be as sisters to a pure mind, 
so they strengthened him in constancy, fortitude, and lib- 

* The archbishop himself stated : " Besides divers my poor bodies sickness, I can neither 
day nor night change apparel, having neither of myself, nor of any other bod}', one penny, to 
cause the broken shirt that is on my back to be once washed ; whose incommodity decency 
will not have it to be declared, besides the misery of cold, such others without even a conve- 
nient hose." He had been nearly three months in prison when he thus wrote. 



124 Martyrs and Confessors 

erty of spirit. He daily grew in the contempt of the 
things of this world, and the generous determination of 
suffering all things for Christ. For he is not to be called 
courageous whose courage does not rise under difficulties, 
as St. Bernard says, ' The faithful man is more faithful when 
afflicted.' (Epist. 256.) 

" But our good Lord, whose goodness exceeds our desires, 
did not abandon his servant in his distress, but by the aid 
and observation of a bird, he enabled him to fly from pri- 
son. (Athan., Oratio contra Gentes.) Small instruments 
suffice in his hand for great results. What is smaller than 
a damp head of saffron ? yet it called our prelate from the 
business of this world to that of saving souls ; so by watch- 
ing the flight hither and thither of a bird, he learned how 
to escape from that labyrinth of Daedalus, surrounded by 
so many walls, fastened with so many locks. Thus the fu- 
gitive Malchus, with the partner of his home and faith, 
learned by watching the ants a path of flight. 

" The archbishop escaped from the Tower, and that in a 
manner so unexpected as to excite the surprise of all who 
knew the place and the care taken in guarding prisoners. 
Many illustrious men who had formerly been connected by 
friendship with the prisoner were anxious to learn from 
himself how he had escaped out of the lion's den. Among 
others, the illustrious Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of Asaph,* 
who was at that time living at Milan, on hearing that, after 
his escape from London, he was at Louvain, wrote to him 
the following letter, partly to congratulate him, partly to 
inquire the particulars of his escape : 

" Copy of a letter from the Bishop of Asaph to the Primate^ 
translated front the Eiiglish original. 

" ' Illustrious and very Reverend Lord, I was deeply 
grieved to learn that your grace, on your arrival in Ireland, 

* Dr. Creagh mentioned in his examination that he had known him at Rome. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 125 

had been treacherously captured and taken to the Tower 
of London. But equally great was my joy when I learned 
that you had escaped almost miraculously, and had reached 
Louvain, where you were hospitably entertained by our 
mutual friend, Master Michael,* who, I doubt not, rejoiced 
at your arrival as I did at your escape. When you have 
leisure, you would sensibly oblige me by writing me a full 
account of your escape ; for, when I was first told of it, it 
appeared to me so strange as to resemble the dream seen 
by St. Peter, when the angel led him forth from prison. 
However it be, praise be to God, who deigned to protect 
his servant. To his divine guardianship I commend your 
grace, praying you to remember me in your prayers ,* and 
as it is reported here that a certain English father of the 
Society of Jesus was your grace's companion in Ireland, 
there are many here who are anxious to know his fate. 
There lives in this city a very pious Irish Jesuit, named 
Maurice, who greatly rejoiced at hearing of your escape. 
I pray you to salute for me our reverend friend Master 
Michael. f Wishing your grace health and peace, 

u ' Your grace's unworthy brother and servant, 
" ' Thomas Goldwell, Bishop of St. Asaph, 

"'Milan, 20th June, 1565.' 

" The answer which the primate wrote to the Bishop of 
St. Asaph has not come into my hands, but the account 
which he so earnestly asked for of his escape is to be 
found in a letter written by Father James Navarchus, J of 
the Society of Jesus, to Father Florence Bonchortius, of 
the same society, and which is to be found among the 
Japanese § letters printed at Louvain by Uvelphius, 
(p. 290,) and it may be considered fully trustworthy, as the 

* Michael Banis, President of the Pontifical College, Louvain. 

t Evidently Master Michael Banis, President of the Papal College, Louvain. See Note A, 
p. 118 
X Perhaps his name was Captain, and he an Englishman. 
§ Letters from, the Jesuit Missionaries in Japan. 



126 Martyrs and Confessors 

particulars were all gathered from the mouth of the primate 
himself. I have, therefore, thought it worth inserting 
here for such of my readers as may not have an oppor- 
tunity of seeing it : 

" ' To the Rev. Father in Christ Florence Bonchort, of the 
Society of yesus, the Peace of Christ, etc. 

" ' It will not be ungrateful to you, dear Florence, if I 
briefly narrate for you what was lately told me by the 
Most Reverend Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of 
Ireland, touching his marvellous escape from prison in 
the Tower of London. As I judged the event to be not 
unlike what we read in the Acts of the Apostles of the 
delivery of St. Peter, I prayed him to give me the par- 
ticulars in writing, for I feared lest if I trusted to others 
I might omit something, and he, being a most courteous 
man, and anxious for the glory of God, granted my request. 
I deem this narrative will bring no little consolation to the 
Catholics, who now suffer so much, especially to those 
who are engaged in the defence of the faith, and will ex- 
cite the faith and confidence in God of our fellow-soldiers 
of the faith, and encourage them to labor still more zeal- 
ously in the vineyard of the Lord in its present distracted 
and almost desperate state, for who could have thought 
that our Archbishop of Armagh would escape ? I know 
that prayer without ceasing for him was made, not only in 
the colleges of our society, but also by many others, not so 
much that he might escape as that he might with con- 
stancy endure death, like the Bishop of Ross and Sir 
Thomas More, (some members of whose family entered the 
Society of Jesus,) and by his example animate others, and 
inspire them with constancy. But God had determined to 
make him useful to the persecuted Christians in a different 
way, as will appear from this narrative. To begin, then, 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 127 

at the beginning, he was sent from Rome, having received 
much from the bounty of Pope Pius, that he might snatch 
his sheep in Ireland from the jaws of the wolf and rule 
them in all piety. On his arrival he said Mass in a certain 
monastery of his province. The soldiers of a certain 
governor, who had charge of the coast not far from where 
the bishop landed, found him there and carried him a 
prisoner to the garrison, where he was interrogated by the 
governor as to the primacy of the church. He freely and 
ingenuously confessed the Catholic doctrine, and declared 
himself a Christian. Among those who were present at 
this interrogatory was the brother of the governor, a 
violent man and quick of hand, who was furious at the 
bishop's opposition to heresy, and sought by all means to 
have the matter referred to the Queen of England, hoping 
for such a spoil to win at court not only favor, but ample 
rewards, for he made no great secret of the fact that he 
acted rather from self-interest than from any great zeal for 
religion. These are the motives which influence men 
devoid of the love of God, and who are now gradually re- 
turning to the old idolatry. For as Catholics by study and 
inquiry make progress in the knowledge of truth, so those, 
by adding error to error and falsehood to falsehood, fall 
deeper and deeper, as may easily be perceived by any one 
who compares the earlier with the later works of Luther 
and Melanchthon, or by one who, meeting with these men, 
examines into their mode of life and faith. For they can 
never put any limit to doubts, and are obliged to confess 
that they rely, not upon the foundations of faith, but 
upon their own opinions. On the contrary, the orthodox 
faith is one certain and free from change, for it comes 
from God, with whom there is no change or shadow of 
alteration. 

" ' To return to the primate. Being taken on that night, 
he was, as I have said, sent to the queen, and underwent 



128 Martyrs and Confessors 

several interrogatories 'at Westminster. After having an- 
swered all that was alleged against him, and modestly and 
fittingly defended our faith, he was, without further trial, 
marched between two guards through almost the entire 
city of London, as a spectacle of derision and contempt to 
all for the faith of Christ, and thrown into the lowest and 
darkest prison of the Tower. This was on the feast of St. 
Peter's Chair, (18th January.) After a time, however, he 
was removed to a larger and more lightsome room ; for 
some, mindful of justice and the laws, said it was unjust 
that one who had not been tried should be so inhumanly 
treated. While the bishop was thus straitened, God, 
the Consoler of the afflicted, did not abandon him, but on 
the very day of the feast of St. Peter's Chair* gave to him 
both great consolation of mind and a sure hope of deliver- 
ance. He persevered continually in prayer, and on the 
third day following, which was Sunday, recited with all de- 
votion the prayers of the Mass, as well as he could from 
memory, in prison. The peace and consolation which he 
then felt had been preceded by a dreadful fear, so hard to 
endure that his soul seemed at the point of death, and he 
recited the office of the dead for himself, believing that he 
would soon be put to death for the faith of Christ. He 
waited for those who were to examine into his faith and 
life, and who, he knew, were to come on the feast of St. 
Patrick, (17th March,) the patron of Ireland, and his first 
predecessor in the cathedral church of Armagh, and, as he 
had often experienced his aid, he daily by prayer besought 
his help. He was examined on this day, and again on the 
fourth following, and was told by the Governor of the Tower 
that the great point was that with regard to the cure of 
souls, as he (the governor) held obedience was not due to 
the Roman pontiff, but to the Queen of England, to whom 

* St. Peter's Chair at Antioch, Feb. 22. 



/// the Reign of Elizabeth. 129 

all the Irish churches are subject, and that all would be well 
with him if, renouncing his perfidy, (for so he called the 
Catholic faith,) he would acknowledge her supremacy, and 
pray institution from the queen. To all these representa- 
tions, which were again and again repeated by others, he 
constantly answered, as became a Catholic bishop, that he 
would not vary by one hair's breadth from the ancient laws 
of Christ's religion. Five weeks had now passed since his 
imprisonment, which brought it to the octave of Easter, 
when, I know not why, unless by the divine inspiration, he 
began to think of escape. It seems that the thought was 
suggested to him by a little bird, which, flying from under 
the eaves, plumed her feathers, and, spreading her wings, 
and flying before him in his chamber, seemed to invite him 
to follow her example. Although he had no certain hope 
of escape, he began to prepare his little bundle and secretly 
prepare for flight. Nor was his hope vain, as the result 
proved, for God, unknown to his servant, had prepared help 
for him. 

" ' On the following night a great noise was heard in his 
room and the neighboring one, and the guardian of the pri- 
son came to ask what was the cause of so much noise. The 
bishop answered, as was the truth, (for he had slept soundly,) 
that he had heard nothing and had not caused the noise, but 
there were signs in his room of the prison having been dis- 
turbed. On the following night he had strange dreams, 
and seemed to himself to have escaped from prison. On 
the third night he seemed to be surrounded by the forms 
of the dead, especially those to whom, on the festival of 
Easter and the following day, he had applied the indul- 
gences granted to him by the pontiff. The dream returned 
several times, and at length the figures of the dead seemed 
to lead him out of prison. At dawn he began to recite the 
Divine Office, having entirely forgotten his dreams ; but he 
could not free himself from an inclination or inspiration to 



130 Martyrs mid Confessors 

try to leave the prison and pass the gates. This idea so con- 
stantly returned to his mind that he could not drive it away. 
He did, however, drive it away once and again, because he 
deemed it only a distraction of prayer. At last he could 
no longer resist the impulse, and left his chamber hastily. 
He examined the neighboring passages, and perceived 
that all the doors, which were ordinarily securely barred, 
were open, and was astonished at so strange a case. Re- 
turning to his chamber, he yet dared not attempt to fly, 
fearing to bring on himself still greater danger if retaken, 
and tried to compose himself again to prayer ; but he 
could not drive away the idea of flight, to which he felt 
himself strongly prompted, and, having again examined the 
,c|por, he knelt down in his chamber and earnestly besought 
/God to give him courage and inspire him to do whatever 
was most for his divine honor. Having made this short 
prayer, he took under his arm the little bundle which 
through some .presentiment he had before made up, and 
invoking God, the Author of his flight, and laying aside 
all fear, proceeded through six doors, guided he knew not 
ihow along that winding path, for he had been brought in 
iby another door. At length he came to the guards, who 
; asked whether he had a butt. This word had been given 
•t;p them as the sign or password, and had no other mean- 
ing but to detect strangers. As he .understood not their 
question, he was silent, but one of them (and in this may 
be noted the power of God, to whom it is easy to use any 
instrument for .his own glory) answered jestingly that he 
carried his coat .for a butt under his arm. fhey then asked 
him who he was. He had prepared an answ.er to this ques- 
tion ; reflecting that he was the servant of the servants 
of Christ, he answered truly enough that he was the ser- 
vant of a certain great Lord, who was in a more open part 
of the prison. As the guards, fearing blame, pressed him 
closely, and said he should be taken before a judge, he re- 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 131 

mained unmoved, and said he was ready to go anywhere. 
At length, God so disposing, they let him pass. Wander- 
ing for three days about London, amid strangers, he 
heard several speak of the escape of the archbishop, whom 
they described as having a white beard, as indeed he had, 
but they (deceived by the double meaning of the word, 
which in their language signifies either naturally fair or 
white from age, instead of a naturally fair beard, such as 
his) understood it to be white from age. While wander- 
ing these three days through the streets of London, he 
several times met the pursuivants, and some of them spoke 
to him and asked him who he was, but, as he answered 
them in French, they took him for a Frenchman, and left 
him. I have also been told by persons of repute that he 
was met and recognized by the guardian of the prison, but 
that he felt himself hindered from molesting him. At 
length he found a ship, and was taken on board as a stran- 
ger by the captain, who was a decided enemy of Catholics. 
Soon afterward the pursuivants came on board, and thrice 
interrogated the sailors on oath if they knew anything of 
the bishop, whom they described as gray-haired and not 
as an Irishman, (as they thought that name would be 
denied.) The sailors were asked about every one in the 
ship, but, God so disposing, they did not ask any questions 
of the bishop ; for they never suspected him to be the arch- 
bishop, who, they believed, was gray-headed, but, when they 
saw him young and speaking French, they took him for a 
Frenchman. Thus did God set astray those who were in 
the ship, and who were bitter enemies of the faith ; but he 
escaped from out of their hands, and arrived safe in Brabant, 
although three hundred ducats were promised to any one 
who should apprehend him. In that country he gave him- 
self not to idleness or pleasure, but to sacred meditation 
and returning thanks to God for his great mercies. From 
this wonderful instance of divine providence we clearly see 



132 Martyrs and Confessors 

that there is no surer or firmer trust than in God. By no 
other means than the help of God did he escape, and he 
solemnly asseverated that all happened as I have related 
it, nor did he wish it concealed, lest any one should suffer 
for his escape ; and in this he imitated St. Stephen, nay, 
our Divine Lord himself. I will here add, what is worthy 
of note, that it was about the feast of St. Patrick he was 
examined in Rome previous to his consecration, and that a 
year later he was called on to confess the faith of Christ in 
London on the same feast, and he escaped from prison on 
the same day on which he was consecrated bishop. I have 
related these matters as he gave them to me, written with 
his own hand, to you, Bonchort, and our brethren in the 
warfare of Christ, that you may understand God's provi- 
dence in regard to his own, since he restored the bishop to 
the Catholics from out of the hands of his enemies. The 
first time I saw him after his return (for I had before met 
him when on the road to Ireland, and perceived him to be 
a man of good and pious manner) I found him very differ- 
ent in appearance. He had something preeminently holy 
about him, and was of such peculiar piety that many said 
God had worked wonders in his soul, and given him extra- 
ordinary virtue, that he might bring back his nation to 
their pristine piety. Nor can it be doubted but that the 
queen must have been much struck by his escape, and 
felt it a lesson to return to the Catholic faith, especially as 
she is said not to be very averse to it if she were not led 
Dy the advice and persuasion of certain evil men. May 
she, then, be led by this warning of God to a better frame 
of mind. Farewell, Florence, my dear brother in Christ, 
and forget me not in your prayers. 

" ' Your servant in the Lord, 

" ' James Navarchus Ondischothanus. 
"'Louvain, on the Calends of October, 1565/ 
"After some time (how long I know not) f e returned a 



/;/ the Reign of Elizabeth. 133 

third time to Ireland, through solicitude for his flock, the 
holy pontiff also having so advised. At that time war was 
raging in Ulster, (in which is the church of Armagh.) It 
had been begun by John O'Neill, the most powerful dynast 
of all in that province, against Queen Elizabeth. Whether 
his motive was the lust of power or the desire of restoring 
the orthodox religion, I leave to others to decide. How- 
ever that be, it is certain the primate and the dynast did not 
agree well about many things. The origin, or at least the 
great cause, of these dissensions was the discontent of the 
primate at the many injuries the dynast inflicted on eccle- 
siastics,* and his offences against the rights and privileges 
of the churches, many of whose possessions he occupied, 
and, together with his followers, used much violence to- 
ward them. These injuries reached such a height that, 
when the primate found he could not, by advice or gentle- 
ness or threats, bend him from his violence and insolence, 
he deemed it necessary to use his pastoral authority and 
proceed to public censure. He therefore proclaimed 
against him the sentence of excommunication. O'Neill 
resisted the judgment of his bishop and contemned the 
precept of his pastor; but he felt the punishment of his 
contumacy, for his enterprises from that time to his death 
failed and ended ill, and thus the divine judgment made 
itself manifest.! 

"In the meantime, the primate zealously fulfilled the du- 
ties of his episcopate, both in that province and throughout 
such parts of Ireland as he visited either from necessity or 
as opportunity offered. He was, however, a third time 
treacherously taken prisoner, and sent to Dublin, from 



* The chief one was that O'Neill, in an expedition against O'Donnell, in the winter of 
1566 or spring of 1567, hung a priest. On his return to Armagh he applied for absolution, 
which the primate could not give, as the case was reserved to the pope. 

t Shane O'Neill was treacherously murdered by the Scots, whom he had invited over to his 
assistance, June, 1567, his army having been defeated, and nearly annihilated, in a great bat- 
tle a few miles from Letterkenny, on the 8th May, 1567. 



134 Martyrs and Confessors 

whence he was sent over to England and consigned to 
close custody in the Tower of London, where he long led 
a life of suffering, or rather a prolonged martyrdom. He 
escaped from the Tower a.d. 1565, and after several years 
was again consigned to the same prison, where he died the 
14th October, a.d. 1585. 

" Besides his daily difficulties and vexations for so many 
years, he had to encounter many troubles and vexations in 
the administration of his diocese during the short time he 
lived in his province and primatial see ; grievous labors 
and much weariness in governing his flock in that trou- 
bled and afflicted kingdom ; and, the more to try his con- 
stancy and enhance his merit, to bear also the calumnies of 
strangers and the accusations of some of his own subjects. 

" The Bishop of Clogherfhaving a knowledge of the dis- 
putes between the primate and the dynast, whom the form- 
er reproved for many excesses and offences against the 
ecclesiastical jurisdiction and rights, accused the primate 
to the court of Rome of having violated the divine laws 
and those of the church, and produced to his holiness and 
the College of Cardinals forged letters, purporting to be 
written by the primate, containing horrible things and evil 
counsels most foreign to his nature. But the wiles of his 
accuser and the forgery were discovered by both the sig- 
nature and the known handwriting of the forger. The ac- 
cuser, being therefore called upon to answer for his calum- 
ny, fled privately, and, proceeding to England, abandoned 
the faith and became an apostate. And while the pri- 
mate was a prisoner in the Tower he was daring enough 
to visit him, and to offer him, on the part of the queen and 
her council, wealth and honors, if he would take his advice 
and, renouncing his obedience to and union with the 
Apostolic See, swear to the ecclesiastical supremacy of 
Elizabeth ; but he answered the unblushing apostate with 
indignation, and ordered him to quit his presence. 

* The infamous Myler McGrath. 



In the ReigJi of Elizabeth. 135 

" In the Tower of London he had to encounter still more 
wicked machinations, which were more painful to his soul, 
and would have imprinted a fouler stain on his memory 
had not the outstretched arm of God reduced his accuser 
to silence, and his mighty hand strengthened his servant in 
his troubles. One of the prison guards, named Vanright, 
accused him of having attempted to offer violence to his 
daughter. (Some describe her as a washerwoman, others as 
a girl of tender age.) He was put on his trial on this accu- 
sation before twelve jurors at Westminster. His accusers 
poured forth all their malice against him. Alone and un- 
defended, he so clearly proved the falsehood of their state- 
ments and his innocence, that the jurors pronounced him 
innocent, and all who were present openly declared him 
spotless. The girl herself, who had been schooled by her 
father to calumniate the primate, openly confessed the 
falsehood and the subornation. Thus, like another Atha- 
nasius, did he confound his enemies. 

" His treatment in prison varied at different times, being 
at times less rigorous, at times more severe. When he 
was allowed a little more freedom, his delight was to as- 
semble the priests who were his fellow-captives, and were 
scattered in various chambers, and with them to discourse 
of sacred things, as did the primitive fathers in the crypts 
and caves and sand-pits of Rome. In these meetings 
under his presidency were discussed the controversies of 
faith, the duties of a Christian, and the steps to perfection 
for a Catholic. At times, too, he gave answers in writing 
to those who sought his decision on matters of faith and 
morals, on avoiding heretical churches and ceremonies, 
and all intercourse with heretics. For such duties he had 
his commissaries, to whom while in Ireland, and especial- 
ly while a prisoner in Dublin, he delegated full powers, 
and by whose means he, while a prisoner, freely, as it 
were, fulfilled the duties of his office. It is also related by 



136 Martyrs and Confessors 

a trustworthy witness, that at one time, in the Tower of 
London, he was kept so strictly that he was loaded both 
with gyves on his feet and chains on his hands, and was at 
the same time suffering from the stone, so that his only 
solace was to open the window for fresh air, and at the same 
time pluck the herbs which were'growing out of the wall, 
and make out of their juice a drink which seemed to alle- 
viate his suffering. Rightly has it been said by the great 
African, ' He feels not the pain in his foot whose mind is 
in heaven,' (Tertullian ;) so he felt not the chains on his 
hands whose soul was wrapt in heaven. 

" There came an order from the council to Eugene Hop- 
ton, Knight, the head guardian of the Tower, who is called 
lieutenant, that Richard and the other priests who were 
prisoners were to be taken to the chapel of the Tower to 
hear the heretical preaching. The lieutenant spoke to him 
on the subject, to learn his mind. Much moved by so un- 
lawful a proposal, he answered that he would never go, but 
would rather, if it were the queen's pleasure, go to the 
scaffold. The knight, angered by this answer, ordered his 
servants to drag him to the oratory. This they did willing- 
ly, and forcibly held him down in the midst of the audi- 
ence ; but when he heard the preacher thundering against 
the pontiff, and all who professed the faith of the pontiff, 
blaspheming against the saints and the Queen of Saints, 
and disseminating pestilential errors and lies in the ears 
of his hearers, he abruptly interrupted the sermon, and on 
the spot answered the preacher. He was ordered to be si- 
lent, but, boiling with zeal for the honor of God, he contin- 
ued till the sectaries, crowding around him, violently com- 
pelled him to silence. But with one word he adjured his 
hearers not to believe the false preacher, for that he who 
should hold by his errors without doubt would perish ever- 
lastingly. 

" He was taken back to his prison ; and as there seemed 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 137 

no hope of shaking his constancy in the faith — whether it 
was that his jailers were weary of the charge of guarding 
and the cost of keeping him, or ashamed of the failure of 
their repeated attempts to bring him over, or merely out 
of malice and hatred to the Catholic religion — one Culligius, 
an underwarder of the Tower, poisoned some cheese, a food 
which he knew the primate took freely for supper, and 
placed it before him. He, suspecting no evil, ate it, and 
presently felt grievous pains in his entrails, and his throat 
swelled. The day after he had eaten it he sent a servant 
to a Catholic physician in the city, named Arclous ; when 
he learned the symptoms, he exclaimed that the bishop 
was poisoned, that the poison had penetrated to the vitals, 
and that no human aid could avail. The primate, feeling 
himself getting worse, called in a confessor from a neigh- 
boring chamber, Father Critonius, of the Society of Jesus, 
who was there confined on account of the faith. He heard 
his confession, gave him absolution, and did all that the 
difficulty of their position would allow, watching with fra- 
ternal affection over the pious dying bishop, who yielded 
up his soul to his Creator, the 14th of October, 1585. 

" A certain modern writer, speaking of the happy end of 
this martyr, says : ' Richard Creagh, Archbishop of Ar- 
magh and Primate of all Ireland, who spent the greater 
part of his life in the Castle of Dublin and the Tower of 
London, was slain by poison, by a certain villain, and, leav- 
ing his earthly prison of stone, rejoined the happy inhabi- 
tants of heaven.' — Stanihurst, Proemium ad Usserium } pp. 
28, 29. 

" When he was in Rome, he obtained from Gregory XIII. 
an annual sum for the support of some Irish students to 
form the commencement of a college. Its first foundations 
were laid in the University of Pont-a-Mousson,* whence 

* University cf Pont-i-Mousson, on the Moselle, founded 1572. 



138 Martyrs and Confessors 

several pious and learned men have already come to us. 
He exerted himself much to forward the mission of the So- 
ciety of Jesus in Ireland. On this subject there is extant 
a very friendly letter of his to the Reverend Father Oliver 
Manarens, who was then visitor of that society. Mention 
is made in Britannomachia of his refusal to consecrate 
the innovating bishops in England. 

" He wrote several little works, among which the follow- 
ing are said to be the principal : Of the Origin of the Irish 
Language, Controversies of Faith against the Heretics, 
(these two in Latin,) A Catechism in Irish. Some of 
these are extant ; others, I fear, have perished, unless per- 
chance they exist in the Tower of London, where also he 
is buried." 

So far Dr. Roothe. 

I will now proceed to fill some omissions in the life 
given by Dr. Roothe, availing myself of the labors of the 
learned writer in the Rambler. Dr. Creagh's zeal and high 
repute for learning attracted the attention of the nuncio 
David Wolfe, who arrived in Limerick in August, 1560, 
charged expressly with providing for the vacant sees. He 
was at once destined either for the see of Armagh or that 
of Cashel, both then vacant, and was commanded, in virtue 
of the oath taken by the bachelors of divinity, to proceed 
to Rome. He expressed a decided repugnance to this 
promotion, but in obedience to his oath, and not without 
a hope that he might be permitted to enter the order of 
Theatines at Rome, he left Ireland for that city in August, 
1562. His whole resources for travelling on his departure 
were twenty crowns of his own, forty from the nuncio, 
and twelve marks from De Lacy, Bishop of Limerick. 
Arriving in Rome, in January, 1563, he delivered to the 
general of the Jesuits the letter written to Cardinal Moroni 
by the Irish nuncio, and was ordered, in the month of 
February, by Cardinal Gonzaga, who then held the place 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 139 

of Moroni, absent at the Council of Trent, not to think of 
entering any religious order until the pope's pleasure was 
known. The order was soon given ; he was commanded to 
prepare for consecration as Archbishop of Armagh, was 
examined on St. Patrick's day, 1564, and consecrated by 
Lomelino and other bishops in the pope's chapel the follow- 
ing Easter. Under the eye of Pope Pius IV., to whom 
our archbishop was specially dear, there were collected at 
that time in Rome several distinguished Irish priests, who 
had also been sent over by David Wolfe. Three of them 
had already taken their places in the Council of Trent as 
Irish bishops, and several others were supported in Rome 
with their retinue at the pope's special charge. Richard 
was placed on this list as soon as he was ordered to 
prepare for consecration : " He had daily meat, drink, and 
wine for himself and his servants at the pope's cost, paying 
for his house-room, six crowns, by the month ; he had 
apparel of three sorts, of blue and unwatered camlet, and 
wore the same in Rome, having four or five servants 
waiting there on him ; in his household also, and support- 
ed at his own expense, were two or three poor scholars." 
These particulars, and many others too numerous to 
mention, were elicited from him by the inquisitorial inter- 
rogatories in the Tower of London. In the month of 
July, 1564, he received the pope's blessing, and set out on 
horse-back from Rome, accompanied part of the way by a 
priest and the entire journey by an Ulster student. The 
fatigues of this summer's journey reduced a constitution 
not naturally strong, and by the time of his arrival at 
Ausburg he was attacked by an ague which compelled 
him to accept for a week the kind hospitality of the Car- 
dinal Bishop of Ausburg. Starting with restored health, 
he proceeded to Antwerp, where he met John Clement, 
tutor of the children of Sir Thomas More, and then an ex- 
ile for the faith. Prevented from sailing immediately, he 



140 Martyrs and Confessors 

turned his steps to his beloved Louvain, where his heart 
was cheered by meeting some Irish students, and where for 
the first time since his departure from Rome he appeared 
publicly as Archbishop of Armagh. In memory of old 
times he gave a grand banquet to the doctors of the uni- 
versity, " sitting with them in his archbishop's apparel of 
blue camlet, which he did not wear in any other place 
since he came from Rome." Embarking in an Irish ship 
bound for England, he was driven ashore at Dover, and, 
in his own words, " being arrived in England, he was 
unknown ; and at Rochester he found an Irish boy beg- 
ging, whom he took with him to London, and then lodged 
at the 'Three Cups,' in Broad street, in October, 1564, 
where he tarried past three days ; and at his being in 
London he went to Paul's church and there walked, but 
had no talk with any man ; and also to Westminster 
Abbey to see the monuments there ; and from thence he 
went to Westminster Hall at the time that he heard Bon- 
ner was to be arraigned there." Within less than one 
short year, our fearless primate was himself to be arraigned 
there. The dangers of the Irish mission had greatly 
increased since his departure, and there were, especially 
for him, difficulties which would be trying at any time in 
the circumstances of the diocese to which he had been 
appointed. Nearly the whole diocese of Armagh was at 
this period under the absolute control of John O'Neill, a 
prince of great energy and not a few noble qualities, but 
who, though never faithless to the Catholic Church, re- 
garded it, as it has been too often regarded, as an acolyte 
of the civil power. He wished to have the vacant see of 
Down for his brother, a young man without learning, 
only twenty-three years of age, and he had sent to Rome for 
the purpose. But the primate, it was known, would not con- 
sent to that nomination. Moreover, Terence Daniel, foster- 
brother of O'Neill, and Dean of Armagh, a court favorite 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 141 

during the reign of Edward VI., and one of those pliant 
ecclesiastics with whom some of the high places in the 
church were cursed at that period, was strongly recom- 
mended to the pope by O'Neill for the archbishopric. 
Here was what may be called the Catholic party opposed 
to the new primate. Moreover, Elizabeth had appointed 
Adam Loftus, an English Protestant, to the see. The 
canons had no part in this nomination ; for, though to 
conciliate them she violated a statute just passed by the 
Irish Parliament, and had issued a conge d'elire, the dean 
either could not or would not assemble them, so indignant 
were they at the intrusion of a heretic into the chair of 
St. Patrick. Loftus, however, after a considerable delay, 
was consecrated in March, 1563, and by the aid of English 
troops held his position for some time in the Louth or 
English portion of the diocese. To the difficulties arising 
from these two parties must be added the primate's utter 
ignorance of the arch-diocese. To use his own words, " he 
did not wish to be sent to Armagh among barbarous, wild, 
and uncivil folks, where he had no acquaintance among 
the clergy :" he had merely seen some of the Ulster pre- 
lates in the English pale in Queen Mary's time. The 
pope had given him a letter to Shane O'Neill, and a pen- 
sion on the see of Down for O'Neill's brother, which the 
Ulster priest had applied for ; but, though he intended to 
go direct to Armagh, he did not know if Shane would re- 
ceive him. Not deterred, however, by these difficulties, 
he resolved, if he were received by the chapter, to incul- 
cate peace and loyalty in Ulster, to induce O'Neill and 
the other chieftains to found colleges and schools, and he 
even dreamed of the possibility of founding an Irish 
university with the cooperation of the crown. If he 
were rejected by the chapter, his course was also resolved 
upon. When commanded by the pope to* accept the arch- 
bishopric, he had extorted from his holiness a promise to 



142 Martyrs and Confessors 

be allowed to resign it when " it was good" and he would 
at once return to Louvain, and, according to his first and 
still cherished intention, enter a religious order. Provi- 
dence had, however, marked out a different fate for him. 

Immediately after his arrival in Ireland, in the winter of 
1564, when in the act of celebrating Mass in a monastery 
in his own province not far from the place where he had 
landed, he was betrayed and arrested by the garrison of a 
neighboring castle and brought before the warden. He 
told his rank and his object in coming over, and at the in- 
stigation of the warden's brother, a man infected with the 
heresy of the times and fully aware of the political prize 
which had fallen into his hands, he was kept a close pri- 
soner, and, in pursuance of orders subsequently received 
from England, was sent in chains to London, where, as I 
have mentioned, he was committed to the Tower on the 
1 8th January, 1565. On the 22d February, the feast of 
St. Peter's Chair at Antioch, he was interrogated at great 
length by Sir W. Cecil in Westminster Hall. He was 
again examined before the Recorder of London on the 17th 
of March, and a third time on the 23d March. Soon after, 
that is, on the octave of Easter, he escaped, as has been de- 
scribed by Roothe, and proceeded to Louvain, where he was 
welcomed by his old friend Michael Banis, President of the 
Papal College in that university. After a short stay there, 
he proceeded to Spain, whence, expecting to return to Ire- 
land, he wrote to Lord Robert Leicester through the 
Spanish ambassador, offering, should the pope order him 
to return to Ireland, to give to Caesar his own and to God 
his own. The good archbishop seems for a long time to 
have imagined that, if the queen could be convinced of his 
loyalty, and he was truly loyal, she would forgive his Catho- 
licity. He was, however, bitterly undeceived. It does not 
appear whether any answer was given to his letter, but he 
returned to Ireland and made his way to his diocese, where, 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 143 

in the month of August, 1566, he had an interview at Irish- 
Dareil, near Clondarell, in the county of Armagh, with 
Shane O'Neill, and he was accompanied by MylerMcGrath, 
lately appointed by the pope Bishop of Down. There at- 
tended also at this interview another powerful chieftain of 
the O'Neills, Turlough Leynagh, to whom a letter had been 
sent by the pope. He was meditating an attack on Car- 
rickfergus, and requested the archbishop to warn the friars 
of that place. On the following Sunday he preached in the 
cathedral of Armagh before Shane, Turlough Leynagh, and 
Hugh O'Donnell, of Tyrconnell, and had other interviews 
with Shane, who in the confidence of his power promised, 
when burying his brother at Armagh, that " he should hold 
his church as honorably as any archbishop ever had." His 
promise, however, he did not fulfil, for a few months later 
he ruined that cathedral to prevent the English converting 
it into a fortress. On Christmas-day, 1566, hoping to pro- 
mote peace, the primate wrote the following letter to the 
lord deputy, Sir Henry Sidney : 

" Right Honorable Lord : 

" At our being in Spain, doubting whether the pope's 
holiness would command us to come back again to Ireland, 
we have written letters to my Lord Robert, showing that, if 
we should by the said holiness be commanded to come 
thither, we should have none other thing to do but what 
our Lord and Master Christ has commanded, ' Give to 
Caesar his own and to God his own.' The aforesaid, our 
simple letters, as we think the King of Spain (because we 
were his father's scholar at Louvain the space of seven or 
eight years) has directed unto his ambassador in England, 
willing him to know whether the queen's majesty should 
be contented that we should fulfil the office that we should 
be bound to, concerning the Archbishopric of Armagh. 
Soon after we have received without our own procurement 



1-44- Martyrs and Confessors 

from Rome such letters as were necessary for the aforesaid 
archbishopric, whereby we were bound by our Catholic re- 
ligion to come to Ireland ; wherein, being before the Lord 
O'Neill's going to Tyrconnell, we desired him (according 
to the above-mentioned letter to Lord Robert) to provide 
for all possible means whereby he might be at accord with 
the queen's majesty and your lordship. But he was then 
so busy about his affairs that he took not heed thereto ; and 
now, before we should earnestly speak thereof unto him, we 
thought but to know of your lordship's will, and what you 
shall will us to do therein we shall, by God's leave, do the 
best we can. The said Lord O'Neill, for safeguard of his 
country, hath burned the cathedral church and the whole 
town of Armagh, although we have earnestly rbided him 
before and after he did the same ; but he alleged sach hurts 
as were before done to his country by means of that place. 
If it be your lordship's pleasure, you will not disdain to write 
to us, first, whether you will have us speak concerning any 
peace with the said Lord O'Neill, and how ; secondly, if that 
peace should be or not, whether it should please your lord- 
ship that we should have our old service in our churches 
and suffer our said churches to be up for that use, so that 
the said Lord O'Neill should destroy no more churches, and 
perhaps should help to restore such as by his procurement 
were destroyed ;* finally, whether your lordship has heard 
anything concerning our letters sent by the King of Spain 
to his ambassador and to my Lord Robert, so we commend 
your lordship unto Almighty God. From Dunavally, (near 
Charlemont,) this instant Christmas. By your lordship's 
to command in what we can lawfully execute, 

" Richard, Archiep. Armagh." 

No written answer was given to this letter. " We have 

* The reader must remember that at this date Loftus, the titular Protestant Archbishop of 
Armagh, was living in a lodging in London, and that there was not even the pretence of a Pro- 
testant congregation in the diocese of Armagh. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 145 

given forth speech of his extirpation by war," was the only 
reply. The Irish race and the Catholic religion were to be 
alike exterminated, and O'Neill, the Irish chieftain, and 
Dr. Creagh, the loyal palesman but the Catholic bishop, 
were doomed alike. Yet even Thomas More in his his- 
tory has written that there was no persecution for religion 
until the close of Elizabeth's reign ; for what but his reli- 
gion did the queen's devoted subject, Dr. Creagh, suffer ? 

To add to the primate's troubles, Myler McGrath, Bishop 
of Down, (who afterward apostatized at Drogheda, on the 
31st May, 1567,) fomented trouble between him and 
O'Neill, (we have already mentioned the outrages against 
priests committed by O'Neill,) and forged a letter to dis- 
grace him with the pope. The forgery was, however, dis- 
covered. The primate, in consequence, it appears, of these 
troubles, and probably to escape the imputation of being 
implicated in O'Neill's resistance to the queen's authority, 
retired to Connaught. Here, however, he was pursued by 
the malice of his English enemies, and treacherously 
taken prisoner, on the 30th April, (a week before O'Neill's 
defeat at Letterkenny,) by O'Shaugnessy, who received a 
special letter of thanks from Elizabeth for his services. 
By order of the queen, dated 22d July, 1567, he was tried 
in Dublin, but acquitted. This is the trial narrated in de- 
tail by Roothe, who, however, puts it before his escape 
from the Tower instead of after. He was not, however, 
set free, but escaped soon after with the aid of and in 
company with his jailer. A proclamation was issued 
with a reward of ^40 for his apprehension. He was 
taken by the retainers of Gerald, Earl of Kildare, under 
the command of Myler Hussey, who, however, could not 
discover him until he had sworn and pledged the earl's 
honor that bis life should be spared. On the 22d De- 
cember, 1567, Hussey petitioned the lords of the Privy 
Council to that effect, urging that, if faith were not kept, 



146 Martyrs and Confessors 

there was an end to all confidence in " petitioner's oath 
and credit." Before the end of the year, the primate was 
once more in the hands of Cecil, (Shirley, pp. 324, 326 ;) 
but, whether to save the honor of his captors or for some 
other reason, he was never brought to trial, but was kept 
a close prisoner in the Tower until he was carried of! by 
poison, as Dr. Roothe relates, in 1585. 

The original authorities for Dr. Creagh's life are 
Roothe, O'Sullivan, O'Daly, and the documents printed in 
the Shirley papers : Sanders's History Eng. Reform ; Life 
of Sir yohn Perrot y etc. See Renehan's Bishops ; and 
the Rambler, April, 1854. 



Anno 1585. 

REV. PATRICK O'CONOR AND MALACHY O'KELLY. 

" He was descended from the royal race of O'Conor, in 
Connaught, but, renouncing the false joys of the world in 
the flower of his age, he embraced the monastic life in the 
celebrated Cistercian monastery of ... in the diocese of 
Elphin, in the year 1562. During all the twenty-three 
years he lived in the monastery he was as a shining light 
to his brethren. He was assiduous in prayer, during 
which he shed floods of tears, and unwearied in all works 
of charity, especially toward the sick, and rigorous in 
chastising, his body. During the last fifteen years of his 
life he never touched beer or wine ; he never ate meat 
during all the years of his profession. Almighty God,. to 
reward the merits of Father O'Conor, suffered him, together 
with Father Malachy O'Kelly, a monk of the same monas- 
tery, remarkable alike for noble birth and virtues, to fall 
into the hands of the cruel satellites of Elizabeth, by 
whom, with barbarous torture, he was first partially hung, 
and then cut into four parts, near the same monastery, the 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. itf 

19th May, 1585. See a manuscript of the Irish College 
of Prague, and Henriquez's in Menologia Ciste>T — Bruo- 
din, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



REV. MAURICE KINRECHTIN. ■ 

I give his life from Dr. Roothe : 

" It is almost incredible what disturbances and tumults 
have been caused in Ireland by the new opinions and the 
differences in religion. Even the heterodox writers admit 
that all, or nearly all, the insurrections which have taken 
place in this island, from the beginning of the English 
schism, have been begun on account of the faith and the 
orthodox profession ; if not begun for that reason, yet 
religion entered into their motives ; or, finally, if that 
were not the real motive of their authors in taking up 
arms, yet they held it out as a pretext, and by that means 
drew many into their combinations. Nor has this been 
said only by strangers, but among natives, by all those 
well acquainted with affairs and intimately conversant 
with the secret councils of those who have staked all in 
the chance of battle. 

" It would not be well here to repeat what has been 
often said, or by imprudent words to stir up a trouble not 
yet laid, therefore I will omit all mention of persons whose 
defence I have not undertaken, and on whom the judgment 
of this world has varied according to the opinions and 
prejudices of various men. I know that the inhabitants 
of Ireland, the subjects of our king, are contented with the 
present peace, (as the subjects of the Roman empire under 
Augustus, when, the civil war being ended, the Augustan 
age of peace returned.) I know how they detest the 
tumult of war, and desire to devote themselves to the arts 



148 Martyrs and Confessors 

of peace, and enjoy its sweets. I know how ready they 
are to receive with warm affection and reverence the pre- 
sence of their prince. I know that they desire nothing 
more than the happiness of the king and his offspring, 
and that under their auspices may be firmly established 
the much-desired peace and indulgence toward the Irish, 
both in respect to other matters of political administration, 
and especially in those matters of TroXireia which regard 
religion, the divine worship and ecclesiastical discipline, 
and the profession and practice of the ancient faith.* And 
since I know the present position and disposition of our 
countrymen, and that respect for justice which is natural 
to all mankind, and has, moreover, been divinely infused 
into their minds, and divinely preserved,! I will not linger 
over the sad events of the days that are gone, or past 
events and manners ; I will not again recite the odious 
tale of ancient quarrels and injuries, of vengeance sought 
or inflicted ; for me these things shall be buried in oblivion, 
and covered with eternal shadows. 

" What I have now to do is to give an account of the 
holy death of Maurice Kinrechtin, priest of the holy faith 
in which he lived and in which he died. He was born in 
the town of Kilmallock, and departed this life in that of 
Clonmel ; the former is in the diocese of Limerick, the 
latter in that of Lismore. I will pass over his childhood 
and youth, and pass to the account of his maturer years. 
Having embraced the ecclesiastical profession, and obtain- 
ed the rank of bachelor in theology, he was made chaplain 
and confessor to Gerald, Earl of Desmond ; and when the 



* Although Dr. Roothe's book was printed in 1619, it would appear probable that this pas- 
sage was written much earlier, in the reign of James I., when the Catholics had hopes of 
toleration from him — hopes soon so treacherously and bitterly disappointed. 

f Sir John Davis, James I. 's Attorney-General for Ireland, says : "The truth is, that in 
time of peace the Irish are more fearful to offend the law than the English, or any other nation 
whatsoever. There is no nation of people under the sun that doth love equal and indifferent 
justice better than the Irish." How little they got of it from his master ! 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. [49 

latter joined the united chiefs, his chaplain did not desert 
him. 

" With a good intention and firm faith, and pure in- 
tention of pleasing God, did Father Maurice go with Earl 
Gerald ; not from party spirit or intention of rebelling, but 
to preserve the peace of Christ — to unite in the union of 
the Catholic faith those who were divided into parties and 
sects, and ' to overcome Satan in their hearts.' (Eph. v. 13 ; 
Coloss. iv. 5.) Whether he acted wisely as regards this 
world, I ask not, for I am sure he acted honestly ; and the 
purity of his intention and the liveliness of his faith will 
have freed him from all criminality before the supreme 
tribunal of the Judge of the world ; for ' to the pure all 
things are pure ;' and 'blessed is he that condemneth not 
himself in that which he alloweth.' (Rom. xiv. 22.) But if 
any man be straitened between the duty of obedience and 
the dictates of his conscience, because he cannot satisfy both, 
there can be no doubt the lesser must yield to the greater 
obligation, the human to the divine, that of the natural law 
to that of the positive, temporal to spiritual, profane to 
sacred, earth to heaven, 'for all that is not of faith is sin.* 
(Rom. xiv. 23.) Such was the hard condition of the times, 
such the necessity of the day, and such the disturbance of 
men's minds ; from which, indeed, we might have been 
wholly delivered and truly made free, if King James had 
persevered in his original intention and granted the wishes 
of the native inhabitants for the free exercise of their reli- 
gion and worship. But let us pass over these sad questions* 
and speak of the piety and constancy in the orthodox faith 
of Maurice. His attention to prayers, his sobriety and 
continency of life, his gentleness of speech, proved his love 
of God and his neighbor. Although these qualities were 
recognized by all, and he was loved and respected by all 
the good, he had the misfortune to fall into the hands of 



150 Martyrs and Confessors 

one Maurice Sweeny,* a faithless and bloody captain of 
hireling soldiers, a deserter from his lord, in whose forces 
he had been leader of the axe-bearers — those who fight 
with battle-axes, a weapon much used by the Irish. It was 
no wonder that Father Maurice was by this perfidious man 
given up a prisoner to a troop of English soldiers, and thus 
to Sir John Norris, President of Munster ; since, notwith- 
standing his allegiance to him, he sold, for a wretched 
price, the Earl of Desmond, when unarmed and defenceless. 
It was then not to be expected that he would treat his 
chaplain better. But the fate which befell the captor 
showed the wickedness of the capture. 

" Maurice, being thrown into the prison of Clonmel, re- 
mained for rather more than a year in chains ; here he bore 
the filth and stench of the prison, and all the other suffer- 
ings of prison, with great patience. He edified all who 
approached him by word and example, exhorting them to 
penance, to constancy in the faith, to restitution of goods 
unjustly obtained, to charity to the poor. He, indeed, be- 
ing bound in the Lord, was as one not bound, for his cha- 
rity and prayers reached all known and dear to him ; nor 
did his generous spirit forget even his enemies. To all he 
zealously preached the unity of the Catholic faith, out of 
which there is no salvation. He could preach this with 
the more effect to the Irish, that obedience to Rome seems 
inborn in them ; wherefore he might duly address them 
in the words of Moses to the Israelites : ' Behold, heaven 
is the Lord's thy God, and the heaven of heavens, the 
earth and all things that are therein. And yet the Lord 
hath been closely joined to thy fathers, and loved them, 
and chose their seed after them, that is to say, you, out of 
all nations, as this day it is proved.' (Deut. x. 14, 15.) 

" The dwellers in this island seem to be chosen out of 

* " Suvinium," which I translate "Sweeny. n 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 151 

all nations, that they hold fast on the Lord in all their tribu- 
lations. And since Maurice seemed by his sufferings to be 
more closely united to God, he was the more beloved by his 
friends and the servants of God. About the feast of Easter, 
in the year 1585, when all the faithful are bound not only 
by devotion, but by the ecclesiastical precept, to approach 
ths holy communion, a certain eminent citizen of Clon- 
mel sought to afford a paschal pleasure to the captive 
priest, and at the same to satisfy the piety of his neighbors, 
who desired above all things to make their Easter confes- 
sion to the prisoner for Christ's sake, and to receive from 
him the holy communion. Victor White therefore went 
to the head jailer, and for a considerable sum of money 
obtained of him that the prisoner should be allowed to 
spend that one night in his house. The jailer assented to 
the petition, which was backed by money, and let out the 
prisoner, for whom the other became security. But the 
wretch was not satisfied with selling this moment of liberty 
to the captive, but sought also to sell the pious host, the 
whole neighborhood, and the life of the poor priest, to the 
wicked President Norris, who arrived at that time. That 
same evening he privately went to the president, and told 
him that, at the request of Victor, he had allowed Maurice 
to leave the prison for that night, and sleep in his house ; 
that he was there then, and that all the Catholics in the 
neighborhood were warned of the Mass which would be 
celebrated the next day ; that he might surround the house 
early the next morning with soldiers, and seize them all. 

"The president listened to his tale with pleasure, and 
prepared his soldiers for the work. When the hour for 
Mass approached, while Maurice was yet hearing confes- 
sions, and the altar was prepared in a quiet part of the 
house, the pious dwelling was surrounded, and the soldiers 
rushed in and seized on all, nor spared the hoary head of 
the household. Great was the terror of the assembled 



152 Martyrs and Confessors 

Catholics ; the trembling women and children hid them- 
selves in dark corners ; others threw themselves down 
from high windows and into ditches in order to escape. 
In these efforts some broke their legs, and some their arms, 
and received other injuries. 

" In the mean time, the priest was hid under a large heap 
of straw which lay in the court-yard. The soldiers, in 
trying this with their swords and javelins, chanced to 
wound the fugitive whom they were seeking in the thigh, 
but he, being, as it were, rendered insensible by fear, did 
not utter a sound, and so escaped. The sacred utensils 
were carried away, the chalice and the rest despoiled, and 
the master of the house himself carried to prison, and 
threatened with the loss of all his goods and his life unless 
he returned the priest who had escaped. These two 
worthy friends, Victor and Maurice, strove each to suffer for 
the other. I will not here speak of David and Jonathan, or 
Orestes and Pylades : the neighboring Britain produced 
Saint Alban, who, while yet a Gentile, gave shelter to a 
Christian cleric, as did Ireland, Victor and Maurice. (Bede, 
lib. i. cap. vii.) But as the laurel of the martyr is more 
glorious than the reward of the confessor, so was Alban more 
happy than his guest as he received the crown which 
seemed prepared for the latter, and so Maurice, by his 
triumph, recovered the crown from Victor. 
f " When he heard, in the place of safety which he had 
reached, that Victor was in peril, he returned to the danger 
he had escaped to free his friend. An exchange was made 
of the prisoners ; Victor was set free, and Maurice was 
fettered and thrown into prison, this time into the lowest 
prison, dark indeed and horrid in the eyes of man, but 
glorious in the sight of angels. Sentence of death was 
passed against him, although not in a legal manner. Its 
execution, however, he could have avoided, and saved his 
life, if he would have abjured the orthodox faith and taken 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 153 

the oath of the queen's supremacy. But he chose the 
better part, he finished his course, he kept the faith. As 
to the rest, there was laid up for him a crown of justice, 
which the Lord, the just Judge, gave to him in that day, 
and will give to them also that love his coming. 

" I find a difference of opinion as to the mode of his 
death. Some relate that, after he was hanged until he was 
half-dead, his head was cut off, and his body divided into 
four parts. Thus it is related in a MS. Compendium of 
Irish Martyrs, in these words : ' When he came to the 
place of execution, turning to the people, he exhorted 
them, as far as time would permit, and at the end, begging 
all the Catholics to pray for him, and blessing them, he 
was hung from the gallows, and, being taken down half- 
dead, his head was cut off and his body cut into four parts ; 
and these were watched all that night by the soldiers, lest 
they should be taken away by the Catholics. The next 
day the four pieces were fastened on a cross in the middle 
of the town, and the head on a high place where it could 
be seen by all, and so he completed his glorious martyr- 
dom.' 

" Others relate that, after his head was cut off, the Catho- 
lics, either by prayers or bribes, induced the executioner 
not to do any more to his body, nor to cut it in pieces : so 
says the Reverend Father Robert Rochfort, of the Society 
of Jesus, in his letter to his companion relating the death 
of Father Maurice. This letter I have given in full, exactly 
as it came into my hands, at the end of this narrative. 
This difference in the narrative may have arisen from the 
fact that some inferred from the terms of the sentence that it 
had been carried out in the regular and usual way, and 
speak rather of the sentence as recorded than as executed ; 
and, therefore, I consider, in the Compendium of Martyr- 
doms, it is rather the sentence than the execution that is 
spoken of. But as sometimes, either through the mercy 



154 Martyrs and Confessors 

of the judge or the favor of the executioner, some part of 
the details of the sentence, though not of its essence, was 
omitted, those who more carefully inquired into every 
particular narrate the event with more accurate detail. 
And probably this is done more accurately in the narrative 
of Father Rochfort than in the Compendium* 

" Somewhat similar to this is the difference between the 
different accounts given by different writers of the mar- 
tyrdom of Sir Thomas More ; for some write that he was 
quartered, (as Paulus Jovius,) others that he was only 
hanged, and the latter are the more correct.f But Jovius 
followed the tenor of the sentence pronounced upon him, 
the others referred to the mitigation accorded by the king. 
Whether anything similar occurred in the present case 
must be inquired into whenever an opportunity may offer. 

" But, whether his body was quartered or not, there is 
no doubt he was beheaded, and the following strange cir- 
cumstance followed ; for, his head being exposed for several 
days in the sight of many, as they crowded round the foot 
of the cross which stood in the middle of the market-place, 
about the tenth hour each day they perceived a suffusion 
of ruddy color and perspiration on the forehead and cheeks 
of the separated head ; and many remarked that that was 
the hour at which Maurice, when free, used to celebrate 
Mass, as if even in his ashes glowed the flame of piety and 
adorned the forehead of the martyr. 

" Some remarked, too, that his hands after death formed 
ol themselves the sign of the cross, the first fingers being 
crossed and the thumbs on the index ; and when the sol- 
diers who were on guard, seeing this, sought to remove 

* It was a common request to make of the executioner of those who were executed after the 
manner of traitors that he would allow them to hang until they were dead before being cut down 
and embowelled ; but frequently this was not done. — See instances in Challoner' 's Mission- 
ary Priests, and Lingard, vol. v. p. 39. 

t Henry commuted the sentence into decapitation, and More was beheaded. — Lingard, vol. 
v. p. 45. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 155 

them and straighten the fingers and separate them, so that 
they should not make the sign of the cross, they returned 
of themselves to the same position, and, as the elements 
return naturally to their centre, so the fingers of the mar- 
tyr returned to the form of the cross. He departed to his 
crucified Lord, the 30th April, in the year of our Lord 

i 5 8 5 . 

" Copy of a Letter of Father Robert Rochfort, relating the 
Martyrdom of Father Maurice Ki7irechtin. 

" 'I send you an account of the glorious martyrdom of a 
friend of mine, Maurice Kinrechtin, a pious priest, chap- 
lain to the Earl of Desmond, whom you know. He was 
for this cause taken prisoner by the English, and taken to 
your native town of Clonmel, where he lay in prison for 
more than a year. On the eve of Easter, 1585, Victor 
White, one of the principal citizens of Clonmel and a pious 
Catholic, obtained from the head jailer permission for the 
priest to pass the night in his house ; this the jailer agreed 
to, but secretly informed the President of Munster, an 
English heretic, who chanced to be in the town, that, if he 
wished, he might easily seize all the principal citizens 
while hearing Mass in the house of Mr. White at day- 
break ; at the same time he bargained to be paid for his 
perfidy. At the hour agreed on the soldiers rushed into 
the house and seized on Victor, but all the others, hearing 
the noise, tried to escape by the back doors and windows ; 
a certain matron, trying to escape, fell and broke her arm. 
The soldiers found the chalice and other things for Mass ; 
they sought everywhere for the priest, (who had not yet 
begun the Mass,) and came at length to a heap of straw, 
under which he lay hid, and, thrusting their swords through 
it, wounded him in the thigh, but he preserved silence, and, 
through fear of worse, concealed his suffering, and soon 



156 Martyrs and Confessors 

after escaped from the town into the country. But the in- 
trepid Victor (who, although he had for this reason suffered 
much, could never be induced to attend the conventicles 
of the heretics) was thrown into prison because he would 
not give up the priest, and would, no doubt, have been put 
to death had not Maurice, hearing of the danger of his 
friend, voluntarily surrendered himself to the president, 
showing a friendship truly Christian. The president up- 
braided him much, and, having sentenced him to death, 
offered him his life if he would abjure our Catholic faith 
and profess the queen to be head of the church. There 
came to him also a preacher, and strove long, but in vain 
to seduce the martyr ; nor would he on any account betray 
any of those who had heard his Mass, or to whom he had 
at any time administered the sacraments. At length he 
was dragged at the tail of a horse to the place of execution 
as a traitor. Being come there, he devoutly and learnedly 
exhorted the people to constancy in the faith. The execu- 
tioner cut him down from the gallows when yet half-alive, 
and cut off his sacred head, and the minister struck it in 
the face. Then the Catholics by prayers and bribes ob- 
tained of the executioners that they should not lacerate his 
body any further, and they buried it as honorably as they 
could. Farewell, and peace in the Lord, and be ye imita- 
tors — if occasion offers — of the courageous Maurice Kin- 
rechtin, and till then prepare your souls for the trial. Your 
devoted servant, dated from the College of St. Anthony, 
1586, 20th March, Robert Rochfort.' " — Roothe, De Pro- 

cessu Martyriali. 

— • — 

Anno 1588. 

RIGHT REV. PETER POWER, BISHOP OF FERNS. 
" Peter Power, native of Munster, for his merits was 
raised to the diocese of Ferns by the Apostolic See.* He 

* Appointed in Consistory of April 27, 1582. — Moran, Archbishops 0/ Dublin, vo], i. p. 184. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 157 

fulfilled the duty of a good pastor, but, being taken pri- 
soner by the heretics, was wounded and bound with cord 
and carried to Dublin, where, overcome by human weak- 
ness and the torture of the rack, he abjured the Catholic 
faith, and subscribed to the new religion of Elizabeth. On 
the fourth day afterward he so repented of this grievous 
fault that, having first received absolution in the tribunal 
of penance, he courageously returned to Dublin, and, like 
another Pope Marcellinus, he sought the viceroy and judge, 
and, upbraiding him with having induced him to be guilty 
of such impiety, retracted all he had said or written against 
the Catholic faith, and renounced all the errors of Pro- 
testantism and heresy. Angered by this public revocation 
of the Bishop of Ferns, the ministers of Elizabeth tried 
his constancy with the sharpest torments, but in vain ; for, 
full of the spirit of God, in the midst of the torture of the 
rack he at one time prayed in the words of the psalm 
Miserere me Dens, then prayed for the salvation of the 
executioners, and told them that they punished him not 
enough for the crime he had committed in denying the 
faith. At length, wearied and despairing of overcoming 
the constancy of Peter, the officers left him bound in pri- 
son. The jailer, a Catholic at heart, was touched with 
pity for the bishop, and secretly unbound him, and let him 
retire to a safe place. Thus did Peter expiate his fault, 
and escape from the hands of the executioners. By the 
aid of the Catholics he escaped to that refuge of all Irish 
exiles, Spain, where he died, in repute of holiness, 15th 
December, 1588." — Bmodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 

Roothe says : 

" Escaping from prison, he made his way to Rome, and, 
prostrate before the tribunal of the supreme judge, obtain- 
ed absolution. He then proceeded to Compostella, where 
he was made suffragan of the Archbishop of Compostella, 
and there died, (as it was said, of poison given to him by a 



158 Martyrs and Confessors 

wicked Gallican sacristan,) about 1587." — Roothe, De Pro* 
cessu Martyriali. 



MAURICE EUSTACE. 

" Maurice Eustace, a youth of great promise, entered 
the Society of Jesus at Bruges, in Flanders, arid being 
called home by his father, Sir John Eustace, a noble and 
influential man, he returned to Ireland, by the permission 
of the father, (as is mentioned by the author of the Thea- 
tre^) before he had taken his vows. He had not long en- 
joyed his gentle native air when he was seized. by the un- 
gentle heretics in Dublin, and examined on the suspicion 
of holding correspondence with the Catholic nobles who 
had been driven by the cruelty of Elizabeth to defend the 
Catholic faith by arms. Maurice, who was an intrepid 
young man, boldly answered the accusation and proved 
his innocence, adding, that he had only lately returned 
from Belgium, (where he was enrolled among the novices 
of the Society of Jesus,) in order to satisfy the ardent de- 
sire of his parents, and that his object was not to excite 
rebellion, but only to satisfy his parents' request, and re- 
turn as soon as possible to take his vows. On this the 
chief-judge answered, * Out of your own mouth I judge 
you ; for, as you say you are one of the Jesuits, who are 
born to excite trouble and sedition, any one must see you 
are guilty of the crimes you are accused of And on this 
he sentenced Maurice to die. The youth was then drag- 
ged from the court to the place of execution, and there 
hung, and cut in four parts, and so gloriously triumphed 
for Christ, 9th June, 1588." — Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 

Roothe, De Processu Martyriali, mentions his death, 
and says he was a master of arts. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 159 

REV. PETER MILLER, 

" Of Wexford, and bachelor of theology, moved by charity 
for the Catholics, returned to Ireland from Spain. Pie 
had hardly landed, when he was taken in Wexford, tried, 
and, being constant in the faith, by order of the judge was, 
after various tortures, hung and cut in four, 4th October, 
1588." — Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 

JLnno 1588. 

PETER MEYLER, 

"A student in arts, {litteris humanioribus) was seized 
by the heretics, and, because he remained constant in the 
faith, suffered martyrdom, at Galway, in the year of our 
Lord \^r—Philadelph. 



REV. JOHN O'MOLLOY, CORNELIUS DOGHERTY, AND 
WALFRID FERRALL, O.S.F., 

"Were Franciscans, and, about 1588, fell victims to the 
malice of the heretics. They spent eight years in admin- 
istering the consolations of religion throughout the moun- 
tainous districts of Leinster. Many families of Carlow, 
Wicklow, and Wexford had been compelled to seek a re- 
fuge there from the fury of the English troops. The good 
Franciscans shared in all their perils ; travelling about 
from place to place by night, they visited the sick, consol- 
ed the dying, and offered up the sacred mysteries. Often- 
times the hard rock was their only bed ; but they willing- 
ly embraced nakedness and hunger and cold to console 
their afflicted brethren. In a remote district of the 
Queen's county they were overtaken by a party of caval- 
ry, bound hand and foot, and conducted, with every spe- 
cies of insult, to the garrison of Abbeyleix. Here they 



160 Martyrs and Confessors 

were flogged, and then put on the rack ; at length, being 
strangled, embowelled, and quartered, they happily yielded 
their souls to their Creator." — Moran, Archbishops of Dub 
lin, p. 143 ; Bruodin, and Mooney. 

Anno 1589. 

REV. FATHER MAURICE, FRANCISCAN. 

He is commemorated by Father Mooney in these 
words : " In the convent of Clonmel is interred the Rev. 
Father Maurice, a priest who suffered martyrdom at the 
hands of the heretics in the same Clonmel, about the year 
1589, and whose relics were placed behind the high altar." 

— Mooney, p. 58. 

— ♦ — 

Anno 1590. 

CHRISTOPHER ROCHE. 

" Born of a respectable family, in Wexford, he had near- 
ly completed his studies at Louvain, when he was compel- 
led by sickness to return home, but was arrested at Bris- 
tol, in England, examined, and called upon to take the oath 
of supremacy. He refused resolutely to stain his soul with 
such a perjury, and in consequence was sent to London, 
where he was flogged through the streets. Then, after hav- 
ing endured the horrors of Newgate prison for four months, 
he was put to the torture of ' the scavenger s daughter! and 
gave up his soul to God, under this torture, the 13th De- 
cember, 1590." — Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



Anno 1597. 

REV. JOHN STEPHENS, WALTER FERNAN, AND SEVERAL 

OTHERS. 

He is mentioned by Curry, Civil Wars in Ireland, p. 6, 
who refers to The Theatre of Catholic and Protestant 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 161 

Religion, p. 582 ; and, as he also mentions several other 
martyrs, the exact date of whose triumph I have not been 
able to ascertain, I shall here give the whole passage : 

" In this reign, among many other Roman Catholic 
priests and bishops, were put to death, for the exercise of 
their functions in Ireland : John Stephens, priest, for that 
he said Mass to Teague McHugh, was hanged and quar- 
tered by the Lord Burroughs, in 1597; Thady O'Boyle, 
guardian of the monastery of Donegal, was slain by the 
English in his own monastery ; six friars were slain in the 
monastery of Moynihigan ; John O'Calyhor and Bryan 
O'Trevor, of the order of St. Bernard, were slain in their 
own monastery, De Sancta Maria, in Ulster ; as also Feli- 
my O'Hara, a lay-brother ; so was ^Eneas Penny, parish 
priest of Killagh, slain at the altar in his parish church 
there ; Cahill McGoran ; Rory O'Donnellan ; Peter McQuil- 
lan ; Patrick O'Kenna ; George Power, Vicar-General of 
the diocese of Ossory ; Andrew Stritch, of Limerick ; 
Bryan O'Murihirtagh, Vicar-General of the diocese of Clon- 
fert ; Doroghow O'Molowny, of Thomond ; John Kelly, of 
Louth ; Stephen Patrick, of Annaly ; John Pillis, friar ; 
Rory McHenlea ; Tirilagh Mclnisky, a lay-brother. All 
those that come after ^Eneas Penny, together with Walter 
Fernan, priest, died in the Castle of Dublin, either 
through hard usage and restraint or the violence of tor- 
ture." v 

Of Andrew Stritch, Philadelphus says : " He was a priest 
of the diocese of Limerick. Educated for the church in 
Paris, he went to Ireland to save souls, and labored zeal- 
ously in that vineyard for many years ; at length, being 
taken by the heretics, he was taken to Dublin, and there 
thrown into prison, where he happily completed his 
course, about the year ." 

Bruodin gives us some more particulars about the Rev. 
YValter Fernan. He says : " He was a priest of Leinster, 



1 62 Martyrs and Confessors 

and a zealous preacher. Taken by the heretics, he was 
sent to Dublin, where he triumphed in Christ. Thrown 
into prison, he was tied round with an iron chain, and his 
hands and feet being tied up to the beam of the roof, he 
was so left hanging for forty hours. He was then flogged, 
and salt and vinegar rubbed into his lacerated flesh. Be- 
ing then asked if he would take the oath of the. queen's su- 
premacy, he answered, with constancy, ' that he would ra- 
ther die than swear that a woman, who, as St. Paul teaches, 
may not even speak in church, was the head of the church.' 
The bloody judge, named Walter Rawley, angered by this 
answer, ordered Fernan to be tortured on the rack, The 
executioners had not been long pulling his limbs asunder, 
when Walter, exclaiming, ' Lord, into thy hands I com- 
mend my spirit,' gave up his soul to his Creator, the 12th 
March, 1597." — Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



Anno 1598. 

MOST REV. EDWARD MACGAURAN, ARCHBISHOP OF 
ARMAGH. 

" Edward MacGauran was the immediate successor 
of Primate Creagh. In the year 1594, Pope Clement 
VIII. employed the prelate as his envoy to the Irish na- 
tion, with the view of animating them to persevere stead- 
fastly in the faith, and, rather than deny their consciences 
and their God, to shed the last drop of their blood in 
defence of their religion. The recent edict of Elizabeth 
against the priests and Catholics was the last of the many 
causes that alarmed the holy pontiff's zeal, and rendered 
such an exhortation necessary. Not content with eject- 
ing the bishops and priests from their dwellings, and 
hunting them into the woods, nor by punishing by fines 
and confiscations both priests and people for not attend- 



In the Reign of Elizabeth, 163 

ing the Protestant worship, nor with punishing as high 
treason every acknowledgment of the pope's spiritual 
authority, this unrelenting persecutrix published a new 
edict, on the 18th October, 1591, in which she commands 
all heads of families to seek out and discover the priests, 
whom she calls Jesuits and Seminarists, and deliver 
them over, under a strong guard, to her officers. The 
Irish princes had frequently implored, during the last fifty 
years, the advice of the Roman Pontiff, and his interposi- 
tion, either personally or through the French and Spanish 
monarchs, with the court of England in their behalf; 
when their remonstrances failed of effect, the Irish then 
asked for military assistance. In these circumstances, 
Philip II., of Spain, incensed against England for some 
depredations committed on his European and American 
dominions, and waging against her an unsuccessful war 
for the last five years, promised at length to send an 
effectual military aid to the Irish, and commissioned Pri- 
mate MacGauran to give the Irish princes the most posi- 
tive assurances of its speedy arrival. Dr. MacGauran, 
setting sail from Spain in the vessel of James Fleming, 
a merchant of Drogheda, arrived in Ireland in the begin- 
ning of 1594 with these two commissions. He lost no 
time in visiting the different princes of Ulster ; he com- 
municated to them his commissions, and then took up his 
residence with Maguire, Prince of Fermanagh, on the con- 
fines of his diocese. 

" Maguire, before his arrival, had been in arms against 
England, and when the Lord-Deputy Sussex called on 
him to deliver up the primate he peremptorily refused. 
Shortly after he directed his forces against the English 
possessions in Connaught, and brought the bishop with 
him. Sir H. Bingham, the governor of that province, des- 
patched Sir William Guelfort, with 'a body of troops, to 
oppose him. The two armies, on the 23d June, met at a 



164 Martyrs and Confessors 

place called Sciath-na-Feart, (The Shield of Wonders ;) 
the cavalry of both were before the fort, and, there being 
a very thick mist, they saw not each other till they met. 
The signal was given, and a brisk and determined action 
having been commenced by the cavalry, Maguire, after 
much fighting, fixed his eye on the opposite general, and, 
setting spurs to his horse, and cutting a passage for him- 
self through the surrounding officers with his sword, he 
pierced Guelfort through with his lance. The English, 
astonished at this daring bravery, and seeing their com- 
mander slain, fled from the field. The primate was at a 
short distance from the engagement, administering the 
last sacraments, and hearing the confessions of some of 
the mortally wounded soldiers. (Dr. Roothe says, reconcil- 
ing a dying heretic.) A party of the fugitive cavalry hap- 
pened to come upon him while thus engaged, and trans- 
pierced with their lances the unarmed and inoffensive 
archbishop, being roused to rage by seeing him engaged 
in the vocation of a Catholic clergyman."* 

Thus the martyr Archbishop Creagh (anno 1585) was 
succeeded by the martyr Dr. MacGauran, (anno 1598,) and 
at his death the headship of the Irish Church, with the 
title of Vice-Primate,f devolved on Dr. Redmond, Bishop 
of Derry, who also laid down his life for the faith, (1604,) 
when the office devolved on Dr. Richard Brady, Bishop of 
Kilmore, who was a confessor, and almost a martyr. It 
then passed to Dr. Cornelius O'Doveney, who also laid 
down his life for Christ, (anno 16 12.) Thus in thirty 



* Renehan, Collec. p. 18, from O'Sullivan, Pet. Lombard, and Philadelph , who puts his 
death at 1598 ; but Dr. Renehan gives strong reasons to think this arises from a confusion be- 
tween two battles of Maguire, and that the true date is 1593. Sir Richard Bingham, writing 
to the Privy Council, on the 28th June, 1593, describes his death — See Moran, Hist. Arch- 
bishops of Dublin, vol. i. p. 290. 

\ Mooney thus explains the title of Vice-Primate : "According to the custom of the pro- 
vince of Armagh, which is that, when the primate is absent or the see of Armagh vacant, the 
oldest bishop of the province has the title of 'Vice-Primate,' . . . which I thought it right to 
hand down to remembrance, lest the custom might become obsolete by oblivion." — P. 75. 



in the Reign of Elizabeth. 165 

years four martyrs and a confessor succeeded each other 
in the primacy of the Irish Church. 

" Primo avulso non deficit alter 
Aureus ; et simili frondescit virga metallo." 



REV. GEORGE POWER, 

" A priest of Kilkenny, and Vicar-General of the diocese 
of Ossory, in a very advanced age was dragged to Dublin 
to answer for the Catholic faith. He made a good confes- 
sion before the public tribunal, and, being thrown into 
prison, and worn out with misery, he passed from life to 
death in chains, about the year 1599." — Philadelph. See 

also Curry. 

— ♦ — 

Anno 1600. 

REV. JOHN WALSH, 

" A priest, and Vicar-General of the diocese of Dublin, 
was thrown by chance on the coast of England, question- 
ed of his faith, and for his constancy thrown into prison in 
Chester, where he ended his life and confession of the 
faith in chains, about 1600." — Philadelph. 



Anno 1601. 

RIGHT REV. DR. RICHARD BRADY, BISHOP OF KILMORE, 
AND REV. BERNARD MORIARTY, AND COMPANIONS. 

The account which Father Mooney, who was one of the 
party, gives of all the circumstances connected with the 
sufferings of these holy men, is so interesting, and gives so 
lively an idea of the state of the country, that I shall tran- 
scribe it entire. 



1 66 Martyrs and Confessors 

Of Father Bernard Moriarty he says : " He was a priest 
of the diocese of Ardagh, who had graduated in canon law 
in Spain, and was Dean of Ardagh and Archdeacon of 
Clane, (Cluonensis,) and was afterward made Vicar-Gene- 
ral of Dublin by Dr. Matthew de Oviedo, Archbishop of 
Dublin, and lived in the Franciscan convent of Multifarn- 
ham, on account of his great affection for the brethren. . . . 

" The convent of Multifarnham, situated in a little vil- 
lage of the diocese of Meath, in the county of Westmeath, 
was founded by a Delmer, who in Irish' is called Macher- 
bert, and is believed to have been founded during the life 
of St. Francis. But the family of Nugent, which is the fa- 
mily of the Barons Delvin, are now looked upon as the 
founders, especially the descendants of Sir James Nugent, 
of Donore. This convent is the only refuge of such bre- 
thren as are sick, weak, or aged, in the whole province, 
who, coming there from all parts, live as it were without 
fear, wearing their habit and serving God in all simplicity. 

" In the year 1601, on the 1st day of October, Sir Fran- 
cis Shean, a heretical soldier, invaded this convent with 
his troop of soldiers, and apprehended the Right Rev. 
Brother Richard Braden, Bishop of Kilmore ; the Rev. 
Brother John Gragan, the provincial minister ; Brother 
James Hayn, a priest ; and the Very Rev. Bernard Moriar- 
ty, Dean of Ardagh, whom I have mentioned before. Af- 
ter he came to the convent, he also arrested the father- 
guardian, who was there, Brother Neemias Gragan, a very 
religious man and much given to prayer, gentle in conver- 
sation, prudent in counsel, and whose whole life was wor- 
thy of praise. He arrested Brother Hugh Mc , [the 

word is illegible,] a priest ; Brother Lewis Ogy , [also 

illegible,] a lay-brother ; Torchseus Gragan and John 
Cahill, both lay-brothers ; and Brother Donatus Mooney, 
a novice, who was to make his profession in two days ; all 
the rest had escaped, for it was night, and, after the night 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 167 

prayers, at the usual signal, they had retired from the 
church to their cells. Now, our captor sent off a party 
with some of his prisoners in the night to his castle, call- 
ed Balmore, and kept us two days in the monastery prison 
ers, he staying there with his soldiers to look after plunder, 
of which there was not much, save a tolerably large store 
of provisions, which was the greater on account of the ap- 
proaching festival of St. Francis, to the celebration of 
which many nobles generally flock there, who send before- 
hand their provisions to the monastery, because there are 
no fitting inns there in which they could eat on that day. 
While we were kept prisoners in the monastery, I so ar- 
ranged that the father-guardian and all the other brethren, 
except myself and one lay-brother, deceived the watchful- 
ness of their guards and escaped. And I myself remain- 
ed in captivity, partly because I was more closely watched 
by the guards, as being young and active, being then 
about twenty-four, and practised beforetime in war, and. 
partly from a scruple that I thought my profession, which? 
I was to make in two days, would not be valid unless I 
made it in the hands of the father-minister, who was a cap- 
tive in another place, and into whose company I calculated 
I would soon be brought. Influenced, then, chiefly by 
these scruples, I would not escape, although the father- 
guardian wished me to escape rather than himself. 

" After two days the tyrant Francis Shean placed me 
and the lay-brother on horses and brought us to his castle 
aforesaid, and set fire to and destroyed the whole monastery, 
to the great grief of all who saw or heard of the destruc- 
tion of that holy house, of which the very memory seemed 
thus given to oblivion. He did not dare to do me any 
personal injury, because he feared my relations and others 
bound to me in blood or friendship who lived near him. 
Nay, he often said he would let me go, but that he could 
not do so, unless, putting off my habit, I would return, to 



1 68 Martyrs and Confessors 

the world ; adding that I might do so without denying 
the Catholic faith, (which he called papistical,) since I 
was not yet bound by vows ; adding that my doing so 
would be very pleasing to my father, (who was a great friend 
of his, and without whose consent I had embraced this 
mode of life,) because he had much possessions, which, 
without a strenuous protector, as he said I would be, 
would most likely be plundered and spoiled. And he 
urged me, saying, ' If you will give up, not indeed the 
papistical religion, but this hypocritical vanity, and return 
to those warlike pursuits in which you gave such good pro- 
mise, I will cause you to be taken into the queen's pay, and 
you will become a great man :' so much did he desire my 
soul's destruction. But he who had called me from the dark- 
ness of misery into his admirable light and the society of his 
beloved Son, so strengthened my soul that not for a king- 
dom would I have put off my profession. He therefore 
strove in vain, and I was brought into the prison in which 
were the bishop and the father-minister and the aforesaid 
Brother James and the priest, and I was left with them, with 
my companion the lay-brother ; and as the year of my 
noviceship was now fully completed, I spoke to the reverend 
father-provincial, humbly beseeching him that, as God had 
granted me to come to that day and place, he would allow 
and receive my vows, by which I was determined to devote 
myself and my whole life to God and Saint Francis. The 
bishop, surprised, or rather wishing to try me, said : ' Hear 
me, my son, who art now in prison for the habit of Saint 
Francis, and mayest depart if you will put off this habit : 
if thou art minded to be for ever bound by this rule, weigh 
well what thou dost.' I answered : ' Right reverend father, 
I am firmly resolved ; and when first I was made prisoner, 
the first thought that came into my mind was that Satan 
had caused this violence to be done to us that I might be 
driven from my resolution. But I might have escaped 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 169 

from the monastery, but preferred to come here, that I 
might make my profession in the hands of the father- 
minister. And I hope that, if such be the will of God, I 
shall escape also from here, so that I be first bound to God 
by this triple knot ; and if it be not his will, I am ready 
to be a captive in the hands of God, and a captive in the 
hands of my superiors for God, and a captive in the hands 
of God's enemies as long as he wills. I prefer the freedom 
of his sons to that of his enemies.' At length, while my 
fellow-prisoners stood around, I made my regular profession 
in the hands of the father-minister, and the bishop and the 
others wept and embraced me with affection. God knows 
what joy my heart felt in that hour. I cannot describe it, 
nor can I now think of the joy of that hour without tears, 
so greatly does God temper for beginners in his service the 
bitterness of afflictions with the sweetness of his consolations, 
so that we may truly say that the sufferings of this time 
are not worthy to be compared either to the grace which is 
given, or the consolation which is communicated, or to the 
future eternal glory which shall be revealed in us. I have 
been, perhaps, too prolix in describing this joy, because 
through life there has been given to me the grace to re- 
member with joy and satisfaction the vows which my lips 
then uttered. 

" After this, our merciful Lord, seeing that I was young 
and not sufficiently prudent or wise, so that, were I long 
in prison, I might perchance relax of my fervor, and, by 
my ingratitude losing grace, say or do something unbefit- 
ting the holy profession I had made, put it into my mind 
to devise some means to escape from that prison ; and I, 
turning my whole mind to it, often thought of seizing, 
with the assistance of Father Bernard, the castle in which 
we were kept in chains, and expelling our guards, keeping 
it in our possession until we should be freed by the Irish 
Catholics, the defenders of our faith, who would come to our 



170 Martyrs and Confessors 

assistance. And we would have done so if there had been 
in it any gunpowder, or provisions for four or five days ; but 
because there was no such thing there, and the enterprise 
could not be effected without shedding blood, we again and 
again devised other means ; but none succeeded. Every 
night I and Father Bernard were bound with an iron chain 
on our feet, for they feared us both much ; but occasionally 
it was omitted to be put on. At length, after we had de- 
vised many plans in vain, I succeeded in making a rope 
out of the tow with which the soldiers fired their guns, 
and, aided by God alone, I let myself down from the top 
of the tower, and so escaped, to the great surprise of all 
who knew the height of the tower. I had only got half- 
way down when the rope broke, and I fell, and, striking 
against an old wall, was greatly shaken and somewhat 
wounded, yet I walked that night ten miles, till I came to 
a place of safety, for I was unacquainted with the country. 
There were guards on the walls, but they did not perceive 
me ; but I saw them plain enough. There was a troop of 
soldiers encamped on the ground around in their huts and 
tents and sleeping places. It was about seven o'clock in 
the evening, and no one saw me ; but when I had crossed 
the ditch of the camp, in which the water was up to my 
middle, I saw all over the place the soldiers running about 
with candles and lanterns seeking me. Thus I escaped 
by his might who decreed that my colleague, Father Ber- 
nard, to whom I had first communicated my intention of 
entering into religion, and who had piously and prudently 
aided and strengthened me, should remain in chains as a 
more mature victim, and obtain the palm of martyrdom : 
by his providence I was preserved for further ills, when, if 
it had pleased the divine goodness, I might have also re- 
ceived the crown of martyrdom. . . . After this, Francis 
Shean determined to send to Dublin the priest and bro- 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 171 

ther ; but the bishop, because he was of a noble* family, 
he gave to a neighboring Catholic nobleman to keep, he 
giving security to send him to Dublin when the winter 
was past, which was done, and he remained there until he 
was redeemed with money the following summer, in the 
year 1602. 

" The father-minister, with Brother James Hayn and the 
aforesaid Father Bernard, were sent to Dublin ; and while 
they were on the road Sir Walter Nugent, standard-bearer 
of the Baron of Delvin, with thirty Catholic soldiers, who 
were in the queen's service, met them, and the soldiers 
who were escorting the prisoners, being terrified, took to 
flight, and Nugent's party took the brother and the priest 
with them. But it chanced that two troops of heretic sol- 
diers were near, who, hearing of it, immediately pursued 
them and forced them to fight, although only thirty 
against two troops. There was a sharp fight for three or 
four miles, the heretics attacking, and the Catholics, with 
unbroken ranks, retiring toward a place of safety. At 
length the brothers were not able to endure the fatigue, 
for they were old, and voluntarily gave themselves up. 
Six of the Catholic soldiers were slain. Both Father 
Bernard's thighs were broken by the heretical musketeers, 
and thus they were led captives to Dublin. The rest at 
length got away ; but Father Bernard, on account of his 
wound, and that he had no surgical care, nor bed to lie 
on, died on earth to live for ever in heaven. The father- 
minister and Father James were detained there until I 
obtained from the chieftains O'Neill and MacMahon two 
prisoners of war, whom I gave for the fathers. Yet before 
the feast of the Nativity of our Lord we built up a little 
house on the site of the monastery, and there we dwelt 
who were left after the flight. I was the first, and then 

* There is a word wanting here, which I have supplied at a guess. The text runs, " Epis- 
copus qui genere erat, cuidam nobili vicino tradidit." 



172 Martyrs and Confessors 

others returned, and from that day there were never want- 
ing brethren there.* They had no church save a very 
inconvenient sort of cabin in the garden ; and the offices 
of the monastery, in which they prefer to live, however 
straitened, rather than elsewhere in comfort. Afterward 
Father Neemias Gragan, the father-guardian, began to 
build a church, and to repair the monastery, and for this 
purpose caused much wood to be cut in the territory of 
Deabhna McLochlain ; and when they had roofed a cha- 
pel, and some outer buildings, there came down the 
soldiers of another Sir Francis Ringtia, and they burnt 
down the monastery again, and carried off some of the 
brethren captive to Dublin. The bishop, whom I mention- 
ed before, who was then very decrepit, and had long dwelt 
in the monastery, because they could not lead him away 
captive, as from extreme age he could neither stand nor 
walk, they stripped of his clothes, and left him lying in 
the open air. He only prayed that their crime might be 
forgiven them. 

" This Bishop Richard was of a noble family in Brehne- 
Graille. He studied civil and canon law ; afterward, al- 
though he had great expectations in the world, despising 
its allurements, he entered the order of St. Francis in 
the county of Cavan, and made such progress in religion 
and piety that he passed through different offices in the 
order, and was made father-minister of the province, 
which post he filled with the highest praise ; so that, from 
no seeking of his own, but the solicitations of others, he 
was made Bishop of Ardagh, the 23d of January, 1576. 
Afterward he resigned that bishopric, and was made 
Bishop of Kilmore. Afterward, according to the custom 
of the province of Armagh, by which, when the primate is 



* The Franciscans have never abandoned Multifarnham, and still own the old church (re- 
stored) and the site of the monastery, with some remains of the cloisters, a modern house, 
which is now the monastery, and a field. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 173 

absent or the see of Armagh vacant, the senior bishop of 
the province has the title of Vice-Primate, on the martyr- 
dom of Dr. Edmund Gauran, who was primate, Dr. Red- 
mond, Bishop of Derry, held the office of vice-primate ; 
and at his martyrdom it passed to Dr. Richard, of whom I 
am now speaking, as the senior bishop of the province ; and 
after his death, passed to the holy martyr Cornelius, 
Bishop of Down and Connor. These things I thought it 
well to mention, lest this custom, by oblivion, might be- 
come obsolete. 

" Dr. Richard was old when he was made bishop ; 
throughout his life he was most religious, and never, ex- 
cept when the duties of his episcopal administration re- 
quired it, lived anywhere save in some convent of his or- 
der, and generally in the convent of Multifarnham. He 
never had any garments but such as the brethren com- 
monly wore, and always took his meals at the table of the 
community, unless when the coming of strangers required 
him to remain in the guest-house. He was with difficulty 
persuaded to give up the practice of attending chapter and 
publicly confessing his faults ; he attended Matins and the 
other offices as though he were a simple monk. He had 
no attendants but his father-confessor, one secular priest, 
and two monks. I saw him when very old, and he was 
such a lover of austerities that, though many prudent men, 
even monks, sought to persuade him, for his health's sake, 
to wear linen shirts, until his death he never would wear 
aught but the rough habit. He was much given to prayer, 
and strenuous and watchful in administering the episcopal 
office, as far as the time would allow. Thrice was he 
taken prisoner by the heretics ; the first and second times 
he was ransomed, and gave great edification in his im- 
prisonment ; the last time, as I have already told, being 
old and infirm, he was despised, stripped of his clothes, 
thrown among nettles, and left there. He lived for many 



174 Martyrs and Confessors 

years after he had resigned his episcopal charge, helpless 
and childish, but gracious and amiable. He slept in the 
Lord, in the year 1607, in the month of September, in the 
convent of Multifarnham, and his body is interred, where 
he himself had long before directed, in the cloister, where 
all the brethren are buried, at the entrance of the door 
which leads into the church." — Mooney, p. 75. 

Philadelphus narrates the martyrdom of Father Moriarty 
and the imprisonment of the bishop, but did not know the 
date: he says only "about 1596." 



REV. DONATUS O'MOLLONY 

" Was of a noble family, a theologian and priest, and vicar 
of the diocese of Killaloe. He was a truly apostolic pastor, 
and when the wild boars ravaged the vineyard of the Lord 
in the diocese of Killaloe, (of which Malachy O'Mollony was 
bishop,) he feared not to risk his life for his flock. He was 
taken in the district of Ormond, where he was visiting the, 
parish priest, and, with his hands tied behind his back like 
a robber, was dragged to Dublin in the midst of the soldiers. 
The reader may imagine what he suffered in this long 
journey. (I have heard much of it from my mother, 
Margaret O'Mollony, a near relative of the martyr, and 
from other friends in my country, but for the sake of 
brevity I omit much.) Hardly was Donatus shut up in 
the Tower of Dublin, when the iron boots, the rack, the 
iron gauntlets, and the other instruments with which the 
executioners tortured the confessors of Christ were paraded 
before his eyes, and he was asked by the chief-judge whether 
he would subscribe to the queen's laws and decrees in 
matters of religion. Mollony, filled with the spirit of God, 
answered courageously he was ready to obey the queens com- 
mands in all things not contrary to the laws of Jesus Christ, 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 175 

the King of kings, and his vicar on earth. The judge, like 
Pilate, answered : ' The queen in her kingdom is the only 
vicar of Christ and head of the church ; therefore you must 
either take the oath of supremacy or die.' Mollony 
answered, ' Either Paul, the doctor of the Gentiles, and 
Christ himself in his gospels, err, or the queen is not the 
vicar of Christ' ' Then you will not acknowledge the 
supreme authority, after Christ, of the queen in spirituals ?' 
' By no means', said Mollony ; ' a woman, who may not speak 
in the church, I cannot acknowledge as its head ; nay, for the 
truth of the opposite I am ready, by God's help, to endure all 
torments, and death itself! ' Very good/ said the judge ; ' we 
shall see to-morrow if your deeds correspond with your 
words.' 

"Next day, about nine o'clock, the executioners, by 
order of the judge, so squeezed Donatus's feet in iron boots, 
and his hands in like gauntlets, that blood came from all 
his ten fingers. 

" But the torture failed to move him, and during it 
Donatus more than once returned thanks to God that by 
his grace he was able to bear the torture for his Son's name. 
He was then for two hours extended on the rack, so that 
he was stretched out a span in length. During the cruel 
torture Donatus continually either prayed or exhorted the 
Catholics who were near to constancy in the faith, which is 
the only road to salvation, and for which he was ready to 
shed his blood. The executioners were moved to tears by 
the patience and constancy of the sufferer, and, by order of 
the judge, carried him, half-dead, back to prison, where a 
few hours afterward he slept piously in the Lord, on the 
24th April, anno 1601." — Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



176 Martyrs and Confessors 

REV. JOHN O'KELLY, 

" A priest of Connaught, of an illustrious race, endured 
many torments for the Catholic religion, and, worn out by 
sufferings and the squalor of prison,, he yielded his soul to 
God, in prison, in Dublin, 15th May, 1601." — Bruodin, 
lib. iii. cap. xx. 

— ♦ — 

RIGHT REV. MALACHY O'MOLLONY, BISHOP OF KILLALOE. 

" Malachy O'Mollony, of Thomond, Bishop of Killa- 
loe, a pastor unwearied in labor, full of learning and apos- 
tolic zeal, did not escape the satellites of Elizabeth, who 
were roaming through all. parts of Ireland. He was taken 
in the castle of the illustrious hero Gelasius O'Saghnashy, 
dynast of the Island of Guor and of Knaleo, and was led on 
foot through all Thomond to prison in Limerick. In that 
long journey he suffered unheard-of insults and injuries 
from the brutal soldiers. He spent eighteen months in a 
squalid prison, amidst thieves and robbers, and his con- 
stancy in the faith was firm as gold tried in the fire. As 
his constancy remained unshaken by his sufferings, he 
was brought before the tribunal and asked whether, as be- 
came a subject, he would subscribe to the queen's decrees in 
matters of faith. Malachy answered that it was not com- 
petent for Elizabeth to rule the church, and that therefore 
he recognized her authority in temporals, but not in spiri- 
tuals. Then the chief-judge, without any further examina- 
tion, sentenced him to be first tortured and then put to 
death. After sentence the good shepherd was taken back 
to prison, whence he escaped that very night by the care 
of his uncle, Gelasius O'Mollony, my grandfather, and, re- 
turning to his own people in Thomond, he changed his 
dress, and, disguised as a laborer, and hiding from the 
heretics for the most part in woods and morasses, he dis- 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 177 

charged the duties of a bishop for some years. At length, 
in great holiness, worn out with age and hardships, he 
slept in the Lord, in the house of an honorable man, Cor- 
nelius Bruodin, Lord of Moyne, (commonly called Mac- 
Bruodin,) the 20th July,, 1603." — Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



Anno 1602. 

FORTY-TWO PRIESTS. 

" It was intimated in many districts of the southern pro- 
vince, in 1602, that such of the clergy as pi rented them- 
selves to the magistrates would be allowed to take their 
departure from the kingdom. Two Dominican fathers^ 
and forty others,* for the most part Cistercians and secu- 
lar priests, availed themselves of the government proposal. 
They were ordered to assemble at the Island of Inniscat- 
tery, in the vicinity of Limerick, and on the appointed day 
they were taken on board a vessel-of-war to sail for France. 
No somier, however, had they put to sea than all were 
tnrown overboard. When the ship returned to port, the 
captain and all the soldiers and sailors in her were cast 
into prison, and all the officers were cashiered by the 
queen's order, that she might seem to the world innocent 
of that atrocity ; but at the same time they were privately 
admonished not to regard this, and after their pretended 
imprisonment were rewarded with a part of the goods of 
the abbey abandoned by those so sacrilegiously slain by 
them ; and some of the descendants of these men yet 
live in Ireland."! — Hib. Dom. p. 595, who quotes O'Heyn, 
Epilogus Chronol. p. 18. 

* De Burgo says : " Forty-two monks, under the name of Bemardins, two fathers of ours, 
seven clerics of ours also, came then from the convents of Limerick and Killmallock." 

t Incredible as this atrocity might appear, the reader who will look in this work to the yeai 
1644 will see that in that year another captain received the thanks of Parliament for a similai 
act. 



I?8 Martyrs and Confessors 

REV. EUGENE MACEGAN. 

" The convent of Timoleague is near the sea, at a small 
port in the diocese of Ross, eighteen miles from Cork. In 
this convent repose the remains of the holy martyr Dr. 
Eugene MacEgan, a priest,* who, while he was officiating 
with the army of the Catholics, in 1602, was mortally wound- 
ed by the heretics and left for dead, but was carried off yet 
breathing by his friends, and expired in great sentiments 
of zeal and charity in the hands of a priest and a physician, 
who both declared on oath that they perceived in the place, 
while he was expiring, so extraordinary and bright a light 
that it obscured the light of the candle which was there. 
He is buried in the cloister near the northern and western 
angle, and there is a small cross above in the wall." — 
Mooney, p. 49. See also Philadelphus. 



REV. DOMINICK COLLINS, S.J. 

The following account of this holy martyr is given by 
Tanner : 

"Dominick Collins, a man who showed equal courage 
when serving in France and Spain under the banners of 
an earthly prince, and in the Society of Jesus under the 
banner of the Cross, was born of noble and illustrious pa- 
rents in Ireland, lords of a town called Labranche.f His 
name while living in the world was O'Calanus, (it is the 
custom in Ireland to prefix the letter to a name as a sign 
of nobility,) but when he entered religion he -changed it 
through humility to Collins. $ When he had attained to 
manhood under the training of his pious parents, he cross- 

* " Doctor in theology, and viear*apostolic of the diocese of Ross." — Pkiladelph. 

t Philade'phus calls him " Yoghelensis," an inhabitant of Youghal, as does O'Sullivan, p. 

239- 

% Philadelphus gives his name as Cullen ; it would seem, therefore, doubtful whether his 
family name was O'Cullen or O'Callaghan ; probably the latter. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 179 

ed into France ; and, inspired by the generous ardor of 
youth, he determined to embrace the military profession, 
induced to it by the thought that in the army of the most 
Christian king he would be righting rather for Christ than 
for the king, for France was at that time torn by civil strife, 
heresy having excited sedition ; and Dominick served for 
five years against the sectaries who had taken up arms 
against their religion and their king, and obtained the com- 
mand of a company when only twenty- two years of age. 
When that war was ended, he went to Spain, where he was 
taken into the army by King Philip, and given a rank suita- 
ble to his birth and services. He served here eight years, 
mostly in peace, but turned his attention from external to in- 
ternal enemies, and sought by the constant use of the sacra- 
ments, by meditation and prayer, to overcome the interior 
enemies of his soul, and to overcome his body by mortifi- 
cation. His piety thus daily increasing, he began by de- 
grees to conceive a desire for a more perfect life, and to 
view in another light the goods of this world. Having de- 
termined to enlist under the standard of Christ, he only 
hesitated as to which of the various orders of his soldiers 
he would join. He was at first inclined to join the Dis- 
calced Franciscans, from love of the strictness of their 
rule ; or the Friars Preachers, whose order was celebrated 
in Spain ; and the heads of both these orders, knowing his 
spirit of piety, would readily have advanced him to the 
priesthood. But, after having long and earnestly recom- 
mended the matter to God, he determined to enter the 
humble Society of Jesus, and to continue in it in the hum- 
ble rank of a lay-brother, as though unworthy or unfitting 
the rank of priest. When he arrived at Compostella, 
where he went to enter on his noviceship, in a handsome 
dress, and accompanied by a large number of friends and 
servants, as was fitting for his birth and rank, all the fa- 
thers judged him unable to undergo the labors and duties 



180 Martyrs and Confessors 

of such a state, because, although more than thirty years 
of age, he had always been accustomed to be waited on, 
and had ever lived in affluence. 

" As he perceived the common opinion in their counte- 
nance, he sought to change it by his acts, and a violent in- 
fectious disorder having just then broken out in the college, 
although he had not yet entered on his noviceship or chang- 
ed his secular dress, for three whole months he most 
sedulously attended on the sick, and sought to be em- 
ployed in the lowest and most painful services with as 
much eagerness as he had formerly courted rank and digni- 
ties. After he had gone through his noviceship and taken 
his religious vows, he was given as a companion to Father 
John Archer, who was to accompany the fleet which the 
most Catholic king was about to send to the assistance of 
the Irish Catholics. Here his zeal had full scope, serving 
both the bodies and souls of the sailors, attending on the 
sick day and night like a physician, and exhorting them to 
patience, persuading those who were well to the practice 
of virtue and the use of the sacraments. Yet outward 
occupations did not so engross him as to prevent him from 
meditation and prayer as if he were in a college, and practis- 
ing continual mortifications both at sea and after his land- 
ing in Ireland, as if he had no labors to undergo. 

" These voluntary sufferings prepared him to endure with 
courage the tortures he was soon to suffer at the hands of 
the enemies of the faith ; for, a short time after his landing, 
he was taken prisoner in the fort of Beerhaven by the 
heretics,* and, contrary to the law of nations and in viola- 
tion of their pledges, he alone was put in chains ; for the 
besiegers had guaranteed the safety of all the besieged on 
condition of the castle being surrendered to them, and had 
given the most solemn pledges to this effect to Dominick 

* " Beerhaven" is given by Philadelphus. Tanner has " via" arce Dombugensi ;" but he 
constantly makes mis* ikes in the orthography of Irish names. 



In the Reign of Elizabeth. 1S1 

himself, who had been the pacificator and the messenger of 
the besieged. But they seemed to consider that to have 
seized a Jesuit was a vindication of every breach of faith 
and perjury.* His hands were tied behind his back, and 
he was brought to Cork by a troop of soldiers, where he 
was thrown into the common prison. He lay here for 
three months, till the time of the assizes for the trial of all 
criminals, when he was to be tried. 

" Dominick would not appear in court in any other dress 
than the usual habit of his order, so that, if any other cause 
than his religion were sought to be assigned, his very dress 
might prove the contrary. 

" Mountjoy, Viceroy of Ireland, who presided, made great 
offers to him if he would join the queen's army, threatening 
him, on the other hand, with torments and death if he per- 
sisted in his determination not to deny his religion. His 
friends and relations also sought to persuade him for their 
sakes to yield to the circumstances of the times, and not to 
bring destruction on himself and a stigma on an illustrious 
family, saying he might remain in secret a Catholic and 
only conform outwardly to please the queen. But Dominick 
was unmoved alike by threats and promises, and declared 
he could not in such a matter listen to them, and was ready 
to endure every torment rather than deny God. Nor did 
his acts belie his words, for, being sentenced to death, as 
guilty of treason, he returned joyfully to his prison to await 
the time of his delivery. The cruel Mountjoy was anger- 
ed at this calmness of the man of God, and, that the days 
which were to precede his execution might be full of 
suffering, he ordered him to be tortured, which was 
contrary to law. The most severe torments he bore as if 
they were pleasures and favors of Heaven, and the heretics, 
provoked at his patience, hastened the day of his death. 

* Philadelphia says Beerhaven was taken by Sir George Carew, then commanding in 
Munster. 



1 82 Martyrs mid Confessors 

On the last day of October, 1602, at dawn, having no 
respect for the day, which was Sunday, they led him out 
to execution, with his hands tied behind his back and a 
halter round his neck. He walked calmly along, with his 
eyes raised to heaven and his mind fixed on God, reflect- 
ing on Christ bearing his cross. When he arrived at the 
foot of the gallows, he fell on his knees and kissed it, com- 
mending his passage to God - , then, following the example 
of the martyrs, he prayed for his enemies, for the queen, 
and for his country, and with alacrity and a cheerful coun- 
tenance ascended the ladder. Turning round on the 
topmost step, from thence, as from a pulpit, (for he was 
dressed in the ordinary habit of the order,) he began more 
ardently than ever to exhort the Catholics to preserve the 
faith undaunted unto death, and disregard alike the threats 
and promises of the heretics. ' Look up,' he continued, 'to 
Heaven, and, worthy descendants of your ancestors, who 
ever constantly professed it, hold fast to that faith for 
which I am this day to die.' These words, which 
derived additional force from his high birth and the con- 
tempt he had shown for the goods of fortune, and the 
position in which he stood, were most powerful in encou- 
raging the Catholics, and affected even those who were 
not Catholics. The officers, perceiving this, to prevent 
any further effect on the crowd, ordered him to be thrown 
off the ladder. Nor was he allowed to hang long on the 
gallows ; for, while yet breathing and palpitating, the 
executioner, in punishment of his constant profession of 
his religion, cut open his breast, and, taking out his heart, 
held it up to the people, uttering the usual ' God save 
the queen.' Thus this last victim to God in Ireland in her 
reign preceded the queen, guilty of so much innocent 
blood, to the judgment-seat of God.* On the following 

* Queen Elizabeth died on the 24th March, 1603 ; but her death brought no relaxation of the 
persecution. 



In the Reign of James I. 183 

night, the Catholics collected his mangled limbs with great 
pity, and consigned them to the earth in a chapel not far 
from where he suffered." — Tanner, p. 55. See also Phila- 
delphia t and Burgundian MS. MartyroL Soc. Jesu, and 
O Sullivan, Hist. Cath. p. 239, edition of 18 SO. 



Anno 1604. 

RIGHT REV. REDMOND O'GALLAGHER, BISHOP OF DERRY, 

" And at that time Vice-Primate of Ireland, when in his 
seventieth year, was overtaken by a troop of heretical horse 
who were wandering about the country, and by them pierc- 
ed with many wounds, whereof he died, in the year of our 
Lord 1604." — Philadelph. and Mooney, sub init* 



WALTER ARCHER, 

" A gentleman of one of the first families of Kilkenny, 
proved his constancy in the faith by enduring a long and 
painful imprisonment for having opposed the desecration 
of the Dominican abbey f in that city, and died in exile 
the 24th August, 1604. The convent was restored to its 
sacred use by the piety of the citizens after the death of 
Elizabeth." — Philadelph. 



Anno 1605. 

REV. BERNARD KEROLAN. 

" This Bernard, or, as some have it, Barnabas Kerolan, 
appears to be the same whom the holy martyr Cornelius, 

* See Renehan's Collec. p. 274. 

t The celebrated Black Abbey of Kilkenny. It was again restored to the Dominicans, and 
the church repaired, 1864. 



184 Martyrs and Confessors 

Bishop of Down, mentions in his list of martyrs (which I 
have) as having been hung from a tree at Trim, by the 
heretics, in the year 1605."* — Philadelph. 



Anno 1606. 

REV. EUGENE O'GALLEHER AND BERNARD OTRUORY. 

" Eugene O'Galleher, a Cistercian abbot, and an 
alumnus of the monastery of the Blessed Virgin of Asse- 
roe, diocese of Raphoe, together with Bernard OTruory, 
his companion, a monk of the same order, were slain by 
some soldiers, in hatred of their religion, in the year 
1 606." — Philadelph. 

Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx., gives date 14th November. 



REV. BERNARD O'CHARNEL, 

" A priest of Leinster, of a noble family, was accused by 
the heretics of having administered the sacraments accord- 
ing to the Roman rite, and, without any more trial, was 
hung and quartered at Dublin, on the 25th January, 1606." 
— Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



Anno 1607. 

REV. NIGEL O'BOYLE, O.S.F. 

" Nigel O'Boyle, of the Order of St. Francis, was be- 
headed by the heretics and buried in a monastery of his 

* Mooney says he perished in 1601, on the 8th March, "at a very advanced age, being, as 
was supposed, the oldest priest from his oidination in Europe." (Mooney, sub znit.) The 
difference between old and new style frequently gives rise to apparent discrepancies in dates, 
as is noticed by Mooney himself in this place, where he adds old style was observed in some 
parts of Ireland, the Gregorian calendar in others. 



In the Reign of James I. 185 

order. It is to be inquired whether this is the same whom 
the Bishop of Down, in his list of martyrs, calls Thady 
O'Boyle, guardian of the Convent of Donegall, a preacher 
and confessor slain by the heretics 1607." — Philadelph. 



REV. ROBERT LALOR. 

He was Vicar-General of the dioceses of Dublin, 
Kildare, and Ferns. He had been cast into prison, and on 
the 22d December, 1606, a formula of retractation was 
proposed to him, in which King James was declared to be 
" lawful chief and supreme governor in all causes, as well 
ecclesiastical as civil ;" the bishops " ordained and made 
by the King's authority" were acknowledged to be " lawful 
bishops ;" and, in fine, a promise was exacted that he 
would be " willing and ready to obey the king, as a good 
and obedient subject ought to do, in all his lawful com- 
mandments." To this latter promise Lalor readily assent- 
ed ; and interpreting the preceding declaration as merely 
regarding the legal ordinances of the realm, he subscribed 
to them also. The government, however, was not as yet 
satisfied, and, though his confinement was somewhat 
relaxed, he was still detained in custody. His friends, on 
learning that he was indebted for this leniency to his 
having acknowledged the king's supremacy, were filled 
with indignation : they were appeased, however, when he 
protested " that his acknowledgment of the king's authority 
did not extend to spirittial, but was confined to temporal 
causes only." This declaration of the vicar-general soon 
reached the ears of the lord-deputy, and hence he was, 
without delay, indicted upon the statute of Prcemunire* 
tried, and found guilty. During the trial, the judge 

* Which made the introduction of bulls, or holding communication with Rome, a capital 
felony. 



1 86 Martyrs and Confessors 

reproached him with having denied the doctrine which he 
had by his signature acknowledged to be true. The 
prisoner, however, by his courage, made ample atonement 
for any weakness he might have heretofore been guilty of. 
He declared that there was no contradiction between the 
document he had signed and the declaration which he had 
made to his friends : he had acknowledged the king's 
authority in questions of social order, but he had told his 
friends that " he had not acknowledged the king's su- 
premacy in the spiritual order ; and this he still affirmed 
to be true." This explanation was, of course, declared by 
the government officials to be mere " knavery and silliness ;" 
the sentence of the law was pronounced upon the prisoner, 
and in a few days another name was added to the martyrs 
of Dublin. — Moran, Hist. Archbishops of Dublin, vol. i. p. 
29. 

Dalton, Archbishops of Dublin, p. 332, says the sentence 
was not executed, but does not give his authority. It was 
certainly passed. 

Anno 1608. 

REV. DONATUS OLUIN, O.P.P., AND COMPANIONS. 
" He was Prior of Derry, and in his ninetieth year was, 
together with several secular priests, hung and quartered 
by the English in the market-place of the town of Derry. 
His brother, William Oluin, another religious of the Friars 
Preachers, was also hung for the faith a short time before 
the martyrdom of the prior, as is mentioned by Peter Mal- 
phseus, Prior of Brussels." — Nib. Dom. p. 559, and Dom. a 
Rosario, cap. ix. 

Anno 1610. 

SIR JOHN BURKE, OR DE BURGO. 

I give his life from Roothe, De Processu Martyriali. 
"Sir John Burke was of noble birth, and had inherited, 



In the Reign of James I. 187 

together with the lordship of Brittas, (De Bretasio,)* seve- 
ral other estates in the same neighborhood. His wealth 
and position induced Sir George Thornton, an Englishman, 
to give him in marriage his daughter, a young lady of ex- 
cellent education, named Grace Thornton. After some 
children had been born to him, he conceived a desire to 
travel, more especially in Spain — whether that he consi- 
dered the journey thither easier than elsewhere, or that he 
thought he would find there more facilities either for fur- 
ther travel or for dwelling there, as he proposed, for the 
comfort of his soul and peace of conscience, and security 
in professing the Catholic faith ; for he had already seen 
and partly felt the sufferings which weighed on Catholics 
in his own land, and had heard from trustworthy persons 
of the splendor of the divine worship and the liberty and 
perpetual peace which the Catholics enjoyed in Spain ; 
and how that nation favored his own, not only on account 
of the similarity (as is alleged) of their origin, but much 
more on account of the affection created by their profes- 
sion of the same common faith. 

" While John was thus moved by these reasons, and was 
privately preparing money and getting letters of introduc- 
tion, his servants, guessing his intention, desired to impede 
his plan ; and his father-in-law, having heard from others 
some hints of his, intended journey, made use of all his au- 
thority, and that of his colleague, Sir Charles Wilmot, to 
put a stop to it ; and was it not that he treated him more 
gently because he was his son-in-law, he would have pun- 
ished severely what he called his daring attempt. He and 
Sir Charles Wilmot were joined in the government of the 
province of Munster. Being thus frustrated of his intent, 
he turned himself with more zeal than ever to a course of 
piety in his own country and amidst his own kindred. He 

* Bruodin (lib. iii. cap. xx.) says he was the second son of the Baron of Castle Connell, in 
the county Limerick. 



1 88 Martyrs and Confessors 

attended Mass openly, and assisted at sermons in com- 
pany with his neighbors, either at his own house, when 
there was an opportunity of having a priest there, or in 
the neighboring town, which was five miles from his house. 
And neither the length of the journey nor the heat of 
summer or the rains of winter could prevent him from 
taking this journey at least on all Sundays and feasts ; nor 
could the severity of the persecution keep him from the 
participation in the rites of religion. By degrees his piety 
and zeal for the Catholic religion so increased that he in- 
trusted most of his domestic affairs to his wife, and gave 
his whole time to works of charity, and especially to es- 
corting on their road and forwarding priests, more particu- 
larly those of the Order of St. Dominick, and by this means 
he became much hated by the Protestants. 

" Thus he passed his time until the arrival in Munster 
of the viceroy, Sir Charles Mountjoy, (Lord Mountjoy.) 
At that time, on the death of Queen Elizabeth, the Catho- 
lics throughout Ireland tried to restore in the various 
towns the public exercise of the Catholic worship, which 
before they had only practised in hidden places in fear and 
danger. 

" On the viceroy's arrival in Limerick, charges were 
laid before him against Sir John Burke, the sum of all 
which was, that he had been a leader in those tumults in 
the city ; so they called the zeal for religion which the 
citizens and municipalities had shown in the interregnum 
which occurred on the death of Elizabeth, when it was not 
certain what would be the course of her legitimate suc- 
cessor, King James — whether he would imitate the exam- 
ple of his pious mother and ancestors, or would embrace 
the new sect instituted by his predecessor. And as there 
was this doubt as to what the king would do — for he was 
despotic enough in power to do as he pleased — they deem- 
ed themselves free to come out of their hiding-places, and 



In the Reign of James I. 189 

openly show their affection for the Catholic faith, and, 
without injury to any one, show their devotion by its 
public exercise ; and if in this they be held to have 
acted too hastily in occupying some churches without 
waiting for the consent of the authorities, it was due to 
the fervor of their piety, not to any malignity or spirit 
of revolt. 

" But all was turned into crime, and the viceroy listened 
with willing ears to all that was told to him by informers 
of the zeal and vehemence of Sir John in this work ; and 
he caused him at once to be thrown into prison, and taken 
to Dublin, where he could be guarded more safely in the 
castle. Many interceded for his release, and offered to be- 
come bound in any bail for him ; but all their entreaties 
were rejected, until that plague was raging in Dublin which 
afterward spread over almost all Ireland. At that time 
the chief-magistrate and the council of the kingdom, and 
the judges and all the officials, fled in all directions, each 
seeking his own safety, and waiting till the plague should 
abate. In that terror and flight, after several of the pri- 
soners had been carried off by the pestilence, almost all 
the rest, and among these Sir John, were set free. 

" While he was detained in prison he gave himself wholly 
to exercises of devotion, reciting the canonical hours and 
the rosary of the Blessed Virgin, pious reading and medi- 
tation, in which he seemed so absorbed and forgetful of 
himself that he heeded not the mice which gnawed his bed 
and pillow, and even the skin of his neck. Whenever in 
the night, after having composed himself to sleep, having, 
as he thought, said all his prayers, he recollected that he 
had omitted through forgetfulness any of his accustom- 
ed prayers, he at once got out of bed and threw himself on 
his knees to say them.- 

" When he was delivered from prison, his desire for per- 
fection continually increased ; he became a great friend of 



190 Martyrs and Confessors 

a certain father of the Friars Preachers (Dominicans) 
named Edmund Halaghan, by whom he was enrolled in 
the Sodality of the Holy Rosary, which had been recently 
erected, and most regularly observed the rules of that con- 
fraternity, both as to reciting the rosary, frequenting the 
sacraments of confession and communion monthly, and 
other duties ; and his fervor so grew that his whole 
pleasure was in the society of ecclesiastics and pious con- 
versation. 

" The fame of his piety spread through all the neigh- 
borhood, and came to the ears of Henry Bronkard, Presi- 
dent of Munster. During the whole time of his presidency 
he bitterly persecuted the Catholics ; and certain men who 
were envious of Sir John stirred him up, who was of him- 
self indeed willing enough, to have him arrested. Theo- 
bald Burke, Baron, and Edmund Walsh, Knight, who was 
then vice-lieutenant* of that district of Limerick, by letter 
accused Sir John of being a harborer of popish priests and 
regulars throughout that county ; they added that he had 
erected an altar in his house, as in an oratory, to which 
crowds of people of both sexes came from all parts to say 
their prayers. It would be invidious and distasteful to me 
to relate what befell one of the informers ; nor is it for us 
to guess what will be the fate of the other, or indeed of 
both, unless they repent by times, for the future is uncer- 
tain ; but ' the Most High is a patient rewarder.' (Ecclus. 
v. 4.) 

" It is true that Sir John had erected an altar in the larg- 
est banqueting-room in his castle at Brittas, and, to leave 
it freer, he moved all his household to another smaller room. 
This he did that, on the next Sunday, which was the first 
in October, there might be space enough for the crowd of 
members of the sodality who would come to receive the 

* " Vicecomes," which generally means viscount, is here apparently used for vice-lieutenant 
of the county, he who is second in authority to the lieutenant. 



In the Reign of James I 191 

holy communion ; for, according to the rule of their in- 
stitute, they approach the holy communion on the first 
Sunday of every month. 

" The president, having learned all this from a trustworthy 
messenger, sent a certain Captain Miller with his troop to 
apprehend Sir John Burke and his chaplain, or head of the 
sodality, Father John Clancy, (Clansseus,) and carry off all 
the sacred ornaments. On the Sunday, at dawn, Captain 
Miller with his troop of horse proceeded to the land of 
Brittas, and surrounded the house at the moment when the 
priest was saying Mass before a great multitude. At the 
first noise of their approach the terrified crowd fled in all 
directions ; but Sir John, with the chaplain and the sacred 
utensils, fled into a strong tower built in the house, ac- 
companied by two servants, one retainer, and two women, 
who had joined them in the tumult. The captain with 
his guards surrounded the tower and demanded entrance, 
promising that, if it were yielded, no harm should be done 
to him.* Sir John gave him no answer but that, if he 
desired to enter there, he should go to confession and 
become a Catholic ; if not, there could be no communica- 
tion between Christ and Belial ; for 'without are dogs and 
sorcerers, unchaste and murderers, and servers of idols, 

* Evidently the captain offered safety to Burke, but said nothing as to what would be done 
with the priest ; and the former, well knowing what would be his chaplain's fate, refused the 
proffered terms. This is also shown by O' Sullivan's account of the transaction. He says* 
" Sir John held the castle until the Mass was finished. When that was over, the priest, dressed 
in secular habit, went out in the crowd of people, but was recognized by the Protestants and 
seized. Sir John, mounting his horse, with his armed retainers, rescued the priest from the 
Protestants. For this he was soon after besieged in the same castle by five troops. He held 
the castle against them for fifteen days with only five companions, and then, being pressed by 
hunger, he broke through his enemies by night, and having lost one of his companions, John 
O'Holloghan, he escaped with the other four. He was, however, taken prisoner by the Pro- 
testants a few days later in the town of Carrig-na-Suir, which is in the county of Ormond, and" 
sent to the city of Limerick. Here he suffered much, for many days, from the darkness and 
filth of his dungeon, and, as he constantly refused to hear the Protestant preacher, even stop- 
ping his ears with his fingers, and preferred the Catholic religion to the title of baron and other 
rewards, and even to his life, he finally suffered death. It is said that two women, who were accus- 
ed, the one at Carrick, the other at Waterford, of having concealed him, were burnt alive. It 
is also related that two other women were burnt at Limerick, the one for havirg said that the 
king's laws were unjust, the other for having concealed a priest." 



192 Martyrs and Confessors 

and every one that loveth and maketh a lie/ (Apocal. 
xxii. 15.) 

" Sir John, having given this answer, desired the captain 
and his troop to depart, for that neither he nor the priest 
should ever fall into their hands. His wife and mother 
implored him to surrender, and admit the king's troops. 
But their words fell on deaf ears, for he would neither 
let them in nor come out. The vice-lieutenant, hearing 
of the disturbance, came to the spot with his forces. He 
stormed and threatened, and set fire to the houses of the 
retainers round the castle, and tried to set fire to the roof 
of the castle itself, but could not make them come out. 
After a few days of siege, Sir John armed the two servants 
I have spoken of, together with the one follower, and, 
taking the ornaments of the altar under his arm lest 
they should be exposed to profanation, with his casque on 
his head, his shield on his left arm, and his sword in the 
right hand, he ordered those three to follow him, and, 
throwing open the door of the tower, suddenly dashed off to 
the bank of the neighboring stream, having first sent off 
the chaplain to a safe place, and agreed with his followers on 
a trysting-place if they should escape. Having crossed 
over a murmuring weir-head, he reached the land ; but the 
noise was heard by the guards, who seized their arms and 
pursued him. In order to run quicker, he hid the sacred 
load which he had under his arm in the brambles and long 
grass. 

" He succeeded in evading his pursuers, having lost two of 
his companions, and reached a distant seaport in safety, 
probably with the hope of sailing from that port before the 
news would spread or the place of his hiding become known. 
But finding no opportunity of so doing, he retired to an 
inland town, and, public orders regarding him having been 
published throughout several counties, he was betrayed by 
a woman at Carrick-on-Suir, and taken and thrown into 



In the Reign of J 'antes I. 1 93 

prison by the governor of that town. When his wife, who 
was with child, was allowed to visit him in prison, there was 
nothing he more earnestly urged upon her than to hold to 
the true faith, to serve God and to honor his blessed 
Mother, and to avoid all intercourse with heretics. Sir 
John so fled from all communication with heretics, that he 
would remind us of Polycarp against Marcion, whom he 
called the eldest born of Satan, and St. John fleeing from 
the bath when Cerinthus entered. In order the better to 
strengthen his wife and instruct her in her duty, he gave her 
a letter to Father Edmund Halaghan, the director of the so- 
dality, (in which he had himself been some time enrolled,) 
beseeching him to instruct her and watch over her. She 
was so eager to please her husband that, although little fit 
for such a journey, not being far from her time, she travelled 
from Carrick to Waterford, and, not finding him there, on to 
Kilkenny, and that at the most inclement season of the 
year. A troop of horse was sent to escort him from Carrick 
by the president, who was then at Cork, and they were 
ordered to bring him to Limerick, where the president 
was a few days later to hold a general jail delivery. 

" Sir John so abhorred holding any intercourse with the 
Protestant soldiers that he would neither speak to them nor 
salute them ; nor when he entered an inn on the road, or 
left the prison, or was tied on a car, would he utter one 
word. So also, when he was put on his trial, and accused 
of many things, and especially of having slain a soldier by a 
gunshot when he was besieged in his castle, he answered 
not a word, and imitated him who, as a lamb before his 
shearers, opened not his mouth. The president, like Pilate, 
sought to extract an answer from him, and declared he 
sought not his life or goods, and would treat him with 
great kindness if only he would yield to the king's will in 
matters of religion and faith. On his refusal to obey the 
king in matters of faith, or to abandon the path of duty 



194 Martyrs and Confessors 

in which he had been brought up, he was condemned to> 
death. 

" What was very remarkable about this matter was, that 
the two judges whose duty it was to pronounce sentence — • 
namely, the justices of the province — touched with compunc- 
tion, evaded doing so ; and in consequence, by the despotic 
order of the president, the judge who by virtue of an extra- 
ordinary commission sat to try him was Dominick Sarceville, 
(Sarcevilius,) who was then king's procurator or fiscal advo- 
cate of the province of Munster, and a judge in the Court 
of Common Pleas.* 

" He, indeed, appeared to the spectators to be unwilling 
about this matter, and, looking up toward heaven, to be 
touched by remorse of conscience ; but, fearing to resist the 
authority of the president, he went through his duty as 
judge, and interrogated the accused whether he would obey 
the will of the king and conform. He unfearingly and un- 
hesitatingly answered that he could acknowledge no king 
or queen against Christ, the King of heaven, and the Queen 
of heaven, his Mother ; and that whoever sought to turn 
him away from the true worship and honor due to both, 
far from deserving to be obeyed, deserved neither honoi 
nor assent ; and that whoever would act otherwise was not a 
servant of God, but a slave of the devil. Here I may 
remind my hearers of the bold speech of the martyr 
Genesius, who, when he was urged by the persecutors to 
renounce Christ and obey the emperor, answered his 
tormentor in these words : ' There is no king but Christ ; 
and were you to slay me for this a thousand times, you 
cannot tear him from my heart or mouth.' With 
similar confidence did John seek to deliver himself from 
the importunity of the judge ; and in language not dis- 
similar does the apostle speak of God alone, immortal and 

* " Antecessor in Curia Communium Placitorum regni." I do not know if I have rightly 
translated "antecessor."^ 



In the Reign of yames I 195 

invisible, the King of ages ; and of Christ himself, that no 
one is good but God alone ; and forbids us to call any on 
earth our father, as there is one Father of all, who is in 
heaven. And St. Francis, when his father, in the presence 
of the Bishop of Assisi, would compel him to take his 
inheritance, cast off even his garment, saying that for the 
future he could more freely say, ' Our Father who art in 
heaven.' So John, when solicited to deny Christ and his 
blessed Mother, and his spouse the Catholic Church, 
hesitated not to say that to do so was not the part of a 
just judge or king, and he preferred rather to disobey one 
than the other, and preferred heaven to earth. 

" Sarcevilius then declared he was guilty of high treason, 
and pronounced on him sentence of death in this form : to 
be hanged and then beheaded, and his body divided into 
four parts. This sentence he received with a cheerful 
countenance, and made no answer, save that he rejoiced 
that those who could so torture and insult the body had 
no power over the soul ; and he further expressed his 
aversion to heresy, and faithfulness in obedience to the 
Apostolic See, in whose holy communion he wished to 
die. 

" He was carried in a cart to the place of execution, out- 
side the city, and then he asked to be let down and per- 
mitted to approach on his knees for the space of about a 
furlong* to the gallows. 

" When his request was granted, he commended himself 
to the saints with the greatest fervor, and showed as much 
consolation and alacrity as if he were going to a feast. Truly 
may we say he was bidden to a feast, at which Christ himself 
was to minister, and girding himself to make those sit down 
in the kingdom of his Father who in an earthly kingdom 
would not bend the knee to Baal, but chose rather to offend 

• He uses the Persian word parasang> an uncertain measure. 



196 Martyrs and Confessors 

the presidents and princes and judges of this world than 
to disobey the Judge of the world to come, by whom judges 
themselves shall be judged, and kings, if they err, be cor- 
rected, either here or hereafter. 

" One day judges another, but the last judges all. When 
Sir John was hung, some noblemen, among others Sir 
Thomas Broune, entreated the president that, when taken 
down from the gallows, he might not be cut in pieces, and 
their request was granted, and his friends and relatives 
carried him into the city, and buried him in the church of 
St. John, at Limerick, about the 20th October, a.d. 1607." 

He is mentioned also by Dominick a Rosario ; Carve, 
p. 315 ; and Hib. Dom., p. 565 ; but they add nothing to the 
facts given by Roothe and O' Sullivan. Bruodin (lib. iii. 
cap. xx.) gives a long life of him, substantially agreeing 
with that of Roothe, which he says he took from a manu- 
script life of Sir John, in his possession, written by Father 
Matthew Crahy, his confessor, afterward vicar-general of 
the diocese of Killaloe. 



REV, JOHN GRAVES, DOCTOR IN THEOLOGY. 

Of him Dominick a Rosario writes : 

" Have we not also the history of the martyrdom of John 
Graves, doctor in theology, who, being accused of having 
written a defence of the pope's supremacy, was arraigned 
before an iniquitous tribunal ? Will not the blood of this 
man cry aloud to Heaven till this world has grown hoary ? 
When arraigned before his judges, and interrogated by 
them, here was his answer : ' See you/ said he, ■ this 
thumb, fore-finger, and middle finger ? With them I 
wrote this writing. I do not repent of having done so, nor 
does it grieve me to be charged with it, nor do I blush to 
acknowledge it.' He was then sentenced to die, and his 



In the Reign of James I. 197 

right hand to be burned ; but, wonderful to relate, the 
hand was burnt, but those three fingers remained unin- 
jured." — Dom. a Rosario, p. 163. 



REV. FATHER FRANCIS HELAN, O.S.F., 

" A very aged Franciscan priest, was seized in Drogheda, 
at the foot of the altar, after saying Mass. When he was 
conducted a prisoner through the streets, the women rose, 
rushed in crowds from all quarters of the town, and by 
repeated volleys of stones and other missiles rescued him 
from the soldiery. Father Francis, however, being con- 
scious of no crime, and fearing lest the vengeance of the 
government might fall on the Catholics of Drogheda, 
surrendered himself voluntarily, and, being conducted to 
Dublin, was arraigned in his habit before the lord-chan- 
cellor, the Protestant Archbishop of Dublin. The captain 
of the escort interposed in behalf of Father Helan ; and 
stated, moreover, that he himself had never been in such 
danger of his life as from the women of Drogheda. Not- 
withstanding this interposition, and although no crime 
was imputed to him, the aged priest was thrown into prison, 
where he had to suffer for six weary months." — Mooney, ap. 
Moran, Hist. Archbishops of Dublin, vol. i. p. 246 ; also 
Wadding, Annals. 



REV. JOHN LUNE, 

" Of Wexford, a pious priest, persevered courageously in 
instructing the Catholics entrusted to his care, at the risk 
of his life ; and, being taken by the heretics, he was hung 
and quartered at Dublin, the 12th November, 16 10." — 
Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



198 Martyrs and Confessors 

Anno 1612. 

RIGHT REV. CORNELIUS O'DOVANY, BISHOP OF DOWN 

AND CONNOR, AND REV. PATRICK LOCHERAN, 

PRIEST, HIS COMPANION, S.F. 

I give first his life from Roothe, as it is not to be had 
in Ireland : 

" ' How shall I worthily praise, O holy martyrs ! your 
courage and perseverance in the faith ? You endured to 
the end the sharpest tortures, and yielded not to t>e 
torments, but rather the torments yielded to you/ (St. 
Cyprian, lib. ii. epist. 2.) I speak here of Cornelius 
Dovany, Bishop of Down and Connor, and his com- 
panion, Patrick Locheran, a priest of Ulster ; joined in 
affection, and even in death, their history shall not be 
divided. Great as is the distance on earth between a 
bishop and a simple priest, it is just that we should com- 
memorate on one day the birth to a heavenly life of those 
on whom Christ our Lord bestowed in one day, and un- 
der the same persecutor, the martyr's palm. They were 
sentenced to death by an unjust judgment, under Arthur 
Chichester, Viceroy. They suffered death in the city of 
Dublin, anno 161 1, on the 1st day of February. 

" In thinking of them I am reminded of the holy Pope 
Sixtus, and Laurence the Levite. The more advanced in 
age and in rank met death first ; the other obediently and 
courageously followed his father and his bishop. Sixtus 
consoled Laurence in a strange manner by telling him there 
remained for him yet greater sufferings for Christ, and that 
he would follow him after three days. Cornelius consoled 
Patrick by telling him that he would follow him, not in three 
days, but in three minutes, by the same ladder and the 
same death, he would ascend to the same palm of martyr- 
dom. Sixtus forewarned Laurence of his more grievous 
sufferings. Patrick was pressed to apostatize by Secretary 



In the Reign of James I. 199 

Challoner and his satellites, being shown the headless and 
bleeding body of his bishop, to strike him with the fear of 
death ; but, firmly fixed on the rock of faith, he looked 
unmoved on the blood of his beloved bishop, and drew 
strength for his own passion from the sight. 

" Cornelius, having embraced the rule of St. Francis 
from his youth, almost before he had attained his twentieth 
year, was a pattern of piety and patience, and having been 
raised to the episcopal dignity,* labored strenuously to 
fulfil its duties. At length he was taken prisoner and 
thrown into prison, in Dublin Castle, f and was there kept 

* Appointed to the united sees of Down and Connor, 26th April, 1582. — Acta Consisto- 
rialia. 

t Two unpublished manuscripts in the Burgundian Library, Brussels, contain much valuable 
information relating to the martyrdom of Bishop Cornelius. The one is entitled Com- 
pendium of the Martyrdom of the Right Rev. Fatlier Cornelius CDoveany, of 'the Order of 
Friars Minors, Bishop of Down and Connor, and of his Chaplain, extracted from the letters 
sent from Ireland to the Irish Friars Minors in Louvain. It is numbered 2167, pp. 421. 
The second is a letter from Father Thomas Fleming, Dominican, dated Dundalk, 15th April, 
(old style,) 1612, and evidently addressed to a Dominican father in Louvain. It is numbered 
2167, pp. 415- These two contemporary accounts fully confirm the statements of Roothe and 
O'Sullivan ; indeed, it is probable they were consulted by the former. As, however, they give 
some new and striking facts, I will here give some extracts from each. 

From the Compendium : " During the whole time the bishop was in prison, he almost daily 
said Mass, making use of ornaments secretly conveyed into the prison by some Catholics. 1 
He was often seen by some of ours bathed in tears in mental prayer, and was heard by his 
fellow-captives in his prayer to break out into these words : ' O Lord God ! through thy great 
mercy, grant me, thy servant, to lay down my life for thee, as thou didst lay down thy life 
on the cross for me, thy wretched creature ; and grant me to end my days for the confession of 
th • name either by the sword of the heretic or in this prison.' He often said to noble Catho- 
lics who visited him that he would prefer life in prison to freedom, were in not for the gocd of 
his flock. . . . The bishop and priest were placed in two separate carts, and, as they went, the 
bishop frequently called out, ' Hasten, my friend, to receive your crown ;' and the priest 
answered, ' Beho'd me ; I will not hesitate or delay.' The people thought themselves happy 
if they could get near the cart to receive the bishop's blessing, which he lovingly gave. For 
many years his face had not been so fresh-colored nor his countenance so cheerful and amiable 
as it was from the door of the prison to the moment of his death. When they came to the 
place of execution, there were between five and six thousand people there. The place of 
execution was on a hill, and the two, getting down from the cart at the foct of the hill, knelt 
down and prayed fervently. Then, to the admiration of all, the old mai, with strong and 
eager steps, walked up to the gallows and embraced and kissed its beams, as did the priest. 
All were astonished to see such strength in so old a man, (he was about eighty years old,) and 
one worn out with prison. Then he asked that the priest might go first, (for he had a 

1 I have seen such sacred vessels, etc., myself in Ireland: small chalices, which unscrewed 
into two parts, and could be carried in the pockets, and thin vestments, which rolled up in a 
small space. — M. O'R. 



200 Martyrs and Confessors 

for about three years. What he suffered there can hardly 
be told, being almost without clothing, and in danger of 
perishing of hunger and thirst, had not necessity taught him 
a mode of obtaining relief There were confined in the 
castle prison at that time other prisoners for civil offences, 

pastoral care for his companion,) but it was refused ; and the priest said, ' Go, then, before me, 
reverend father, and truly without delay will I follow you.' He mounted the ladder without 
assistance, the executioner going before him. When he had mounted four or five steps, he 
blessed all the Catholics, praying that liberty might be granted to them, and then prayed 
to God that he would forgive the injustice that was done to him, and that for his part he freely 
and willingly forgave it. So also did the priest. Then the bishop, taking for his text the 
words of St. Paul, 'Though an angel from heaven should preach to you another gospel than 
you have heard trom us, believe it not,' began to address some words of exhortation to the 
people, but the councillors who stood around ordered him to be stopped and immediately 
thrown off. Then gently smiling, he kissed the cord, and himself fitted it to his neck, and 
covered his fac with a cloth, and held out his hands to the executioner to be bound." 

Father Fleming, in his letter, says : " About the same time that my Lord Carew came here, 
an edict was promulgated against all Jesuits, seminarists, and other priests, and a short time 
before was taken prisoner the Right Rev. Cornelius O'Dovany, who afterward received the 
crown of martyrdom : he had reached his eighty-sixth year. The evils of these days will not 
admit of my telling you all that befell him, but I will mention a few incidents. As he was 
passing in the cart to the place of execution, one of the first citizens of Dublin threw himself on 
his knees in the midst of the street to ask his blessing. A noble matron also rushed through 
the soldiers to the cart in which the holy old man lay to ask for a bit of his girdle, 1 to whom 
he willingly gave the whole. The insolent soldiers reproved her, saying she should be put in 
the cart herself. (Thus are carried about those who are taken in adultery and fornication.) 
She answered them that she would deem it a great honor to be put in the cart with so holy a 
man. ... A number of ministers accompanied the procession, among whom was one Chal- 
loner, who is well known to your friend Michael. He was very troublesome to the bishop, and 
as he was just mounting the ladder said to him, ' Confess that it is not for your re'igion, but for 
treason, that you are doomed to death.' 'Nay,' said the bishop; 'the contrary is clearly 
seen ; for there stands the messenger from the viceroy to me, who offered that, if I would only 
once enter that temple, (pointing to it,) not only life, but ample ecclesiastical revenues should be 
given me.' . . . There was one of the soldiers, named Robin Divel, who bought the bishop's 
tunic from the executioner for ten shillings, but he had hardly got it in his hands when the 
Catholics with their knives cut it in divers pieces and plucked it from him, and though he 
drew his sword to protect himself, it was no use in such a crowd, and he lost the tunic and his 
money." 

The following extracts, although not referring to the death of the bishop, are interesting: 
" It was expected that there would be a great persecution of the Catholics, but it is gone off in 
smoke : it is not known why. Our domestic affairs go on well and quietly, and we are very 
well received by the people, as are the other orders. Your friend Robert is an earnest worker, 
and never rests from his labors. Where I am stationed there is an abundant harvest, for I have 
to travel through all Ulster. However, by special order, I have preached here the whole 
Lent, all Sundays and holydays, in a house prepared for the purpose, and which is capable of 
holding six hundred persons, and it is wonderful how ready the people are to receive the 
seed. During the week I have frequently made excursions to the neighboring villages, of 

1 "Although forbidden to wear it openly, he always wore the habit and girdle of St. Francis 
under his other clothes." — Compendium 



/// the Reign of yames L 201 

who were fed, if not better, at least more abundantly, at 
their own expense. They were in the story under him, 
so that he could hear their voices, but not see them. 
Searching about carefully, he found a broken bit of the 
flooring, which could be lifted up, and through this hole he 
spoke to them. They were willing enough to succor him 
in his hunger, but had not much to give ; however, they 
offered him a bit of bread and a drink of beer. As the floor 
intervened, Cornelius made a cord with his braces, and, 
letting it down through the hole, drew up first a dry crust 
of bread, and then a cup of insipid beer ; and many a time 
during these three years such aid prolonged his life.* We 
are thus reminded of the prophet Jeremias, who was let 

which you may judge the fruit hy one example. After one sermon on the right way of con- 
fessing, and after I had published the indulgences granted for that time, I and another priest, 
the parish priest of the place, were occupied all that afternoon till midnight and the next day 
until twelve hearing the confessions of the people, many of whom made a general confession 
of their whole life. These are the things of most moment which occur to me to tell you, and 
if I shall learn any other pleasing news I will communicate it to you. I desire to hear some 
news of my Louvain friends. I wish them all health in Christ, and pray them to remember 
me in their prayers. My best salutation to Master Lossius, the royal prefect, to Peter, to 
Vising, and Smith of the Cross. 

"The Convent of Dundalk, 15th April, (old style ; new style, 25th,) 1612.— Your devoted 
servant, Thomas Fleming." 

* The following letter in the State Paper Office throws much light on the bishop's arrest, 
and shows clearly that his only crime was his religion : 

" Fytzwylliam to Burghley, October 26, 1588. Dublin. 

" It may please your Lordship : there is a prisoner in the castle, one Cornelius, Bishop of 
Down and Connor, who, having lately escaped, had upon his apprehension found about him 
a commission — the copy whereof your Lordship shall receive enclosed — sent from the Bishop 
of Derry, authorizing him, as his vice-primate, to grant pardons and indulgences, who albeit 
a most pestilent and dangerous member, and fit to be cut off, yet, being informed that we 
cannot here otherwise proceed against him than in the course of Praemunire, I humbly beseech 
your Lordship's directions and assistance for some other means whereby we may be rid of 
such an obstinate enemy to God, and so rank a traitor to her Majesty, as he no doubt is. 

(Enclosure.) 
" Nos Redmundus, Dei et Apostolica? Sedis gratia Deren. Episcopus ac totius Hiberni* 
Vice-Primas, Rev»d° D no confratri N r0 Cornelio, Dunen. et Coneren. Episc. — Quoniam prop- 
ter imminentia pericula ac discrimina intentus vitas, personaliter terras illas visitare nequimus, 
ad dispensandum cum omnibus cum quibus si presentes essemus Brevis Apostolici auctoritate 
ac primitialis dignitatis vices nostras ad annum integrum a tempore et {sic) presentium tenore 
hujus scriptural, committimus ac potestatem absolvendi omnes ac singulos ad se concurrentes a 
casibus tarn episcopalibus quam papalibus in foro saltern conscientise, injuncta eisdem pro modo 
culpae salutari penitentia, ad predictum tempus concedimus et indulgemus. — Dat. in ecclesia 
parochiali de Tamlar, 2 Julii, 1588. Redmundus Deren. Episcopus ac Vice-Primas." 



202 Martyrs and Confessors 

down by a cord into a dungeon wherein there was no 
water, but mire, that he might die of hunger ; and had not 
an Ethiopian of the king's household taken of the old rags 
there were in the king's storehouse, and let them down by 
cords to Jeremias into the dungeon, and said, ' Put these 
old rags and these rent and rotten things under thy arms 
and upon the cords,' he had not been drawn up and brought 
forth out of the dungeon. And, in like manner, had not 
the holy bishop received these crusts of bread and furtive 
drops of beer, he had surely perished of famine. 

" At length, by divine Providence, he was released, God 
so disposing that his freedom of body should bring freedom 
to the souls of many. But a very short time passed, 
however, when the royal councillors repented them that 
they had let him go, and they sought by every art to get 
him again into their power. But as the bird which has 
escaped from the net of the fowler suspects everything, 
and flies every dangerous spot, lest some snare be there 
hidden, so he walked cautiously and guardedly, lest he 
should again fall into the same pit. But a care for his own 
safety often came into collision with the due discharge of 
his sacred ministry : he always preferred the salvation 
of others to his own safety ; and at length, after several 
years' labors, he fell into the hands of those who deem- 
ed they would do the king a great service by apprehend- 
ing him. 

" He was seized in the month of June,* while he was 
occupied putting an end to quarrels and confirming the 
servants of Christ. The priest Patrick was taken prisoner 
the same month in the port of Cork, whither he had lately 

* O'Sullivan says he was arrested June, 1611, and executed April, 1612 ; and this is probably 
correct, although Dr. Roothe, in this work, puts his death in 161 1, because he himself ad- 
dressed a letter to him, as in prison, on the 17th December, 161 1, and had he been executed 
eight months before, he would have heard of it. (Epistola Parsenetica ad Episcopum Dunen- 
sem, in Analecta Sacra et Nova.) Carve puts his death at 1614, but he is often inaccurate. 
Father Fleming writes of it as recent, (on 25th April, 1612.) Mooney also, who is very accu- 
rate, puts his death at 1612. 



In the Reign of James I. 203 

returned from Belgium, and he confessed to the provincial 
council that he had been a companion in their travels, and 
had administered the rites of the church to those lords 
whom fear for their own safety or love of religion had 
made exiles from their wide domains. 

" They were both taken to Dublin ; the priest was thrown 
into the vilest dungeon, the bishop was kept in custody in 
the castle.* Both were sentenced to death, but I will re- 
late more at length the manner of their sentence. 

" The bishop was accused that, in the last warlike rising 
caused by the Earl of Tyrone,! he had followed the earl, 
contrary to the obedience he owed to his prince, and was, 
therefore, guilty of high treason ; the more so that he had 
aided by his counsel and help the earl when he fled with 
his adherents. 

"The bishop endeavored with valid reasons to answer 
the principal heads of accusation ; and to the first he an- 
swered that he was consecrated a bishop to labor for the 
salvation of the flock entrusted to him, and, as his bishop- 
ric of Down and Connor lay in that part of Ulster which 
Earl Hugh held by force of arms, it was his duty to labor 
as best he could to direct the inhabitants in the way of 
salvation ; that as to warlike matters he neither desired to 
know nor knew anything ; and had he advised the earl 
against his will, he would not have heeded him or held his 
hand for any remonstrance of his, (the bishop.) As far as 
he could by word and example, he had led men from vice 
and to follow virtue, and had labored and watched to this 
end ; but was not ashamed of it, nor should it be brought 
as a crime against him. And even were these things, 
however unjustly, to be accounted crimes, he could defend 

* He was less rigorously confined, and was even able to say Mass by stealth. — See p. 199. 

t Hugh O'Neill, Earl of Tyrone. To the bishop's plea that the Act of Oblivion covered all 
offences, the judge answered that it could not avail him, as he had not submitted and taken the 
oath of allegiance and supremacy. This was, of course, to exclude all Catholics from its benefit, 
as they could not take the oath of supremacy. — C Sullivan. 



204 Martyrs and Confessors 

himself by reminding them that, when King. James as- 
cended the throne, he had proclaimed by the voice of 
a herald, and publicly posted up in writing, a pardon for 
all offences and crimes before committed. He could, 
therefore, allege a double defence : first, that what was al- 
leged against him was no crime ; secondly, that even were 
it one, it was forgiven by the king's pardon. That such 
was the intention of the king and his council in publishing 
the Act of Oblivion is clear, as otherwise, instead of an act 
of clemency, it would be a snare.* Thus the bishop clear- 
ly answered the first head of the accusation ; the second 
he replied to not less felicitously. 

" As I have heard, a false witness, a son of Belial, ac- 
cused the bishop before the tribunal of having been with 
Earl Hugh shortly before his flight, and having consulted 
with him as to the road and manner of his flight and the 
preparation for it. The holy bishop could have proved 
by the testimony of many witnesses that he was not in 
that province at that time, nor within many days' journey 
of where Earl Hugh was, so that he could not have been 
the adviser of that unfortunate expedition, from which, had 
he been consulted, he would rather have dissuaded them, 
or had they been bent on being rather exiles than pri- 
soners, he would probably have accompanied them in their 
exile. 

" Had he, however, even known of their departure, and 
given them food and assistance, how should this be con- 
sidered a crime, since these great lords of the kingdom, 
leaders of the nation and subjects of the king, were not 
criminals or rebels, were not even accused, as far as he 
could know, of any plots against the crown, much less 
convicted of crime, but, on the contrary, had just returned 



* I have omitted here a long paragraph, in which, in the style of the period, and with 
classic illustrations, Dr. Roothe enlarges on this ; and later, also, one or two other lengthy 
illustrations. 



In the Reign of James I. 205 

from the English court with the favor of the king ? But 
whatever matters were thus alleged against him were the 
pretext for, not the cause of, the death of the bishop ; the 
real cause was in the mind of the judge and his assessor ; 
another was outwardly put forward. His real crime was 
that he was a Catholic, a religious, and a bishop ; that he 
had administered the sacraments, preached the word of 
God, and bore the habit of St. Francis, which they hated. 

" But not even the guilty should be condemned, except 
in accordance with the laws. I do not speak here of the 
difference between civil and ecclesiastical tribunals, or 
of those ecclesiastical immunities sanctioned alike by im- 
perial decrees and the canons of the church, and which 
the holy martyr of Canterbury defended even with his life, 
against the so-called English customs and the Statutes of 
Clarendon. But in this trial the provisions of English 
law were not observed. The accused was not allowed his 
lawful challenges to the jurors. The questions of fact are 
to be determined by the jurors ;* but only strangers to this 
country, English and Scotch,! to whom the accused was 
unknown, and by whom the circumstances of the case 
could not be understood, were allowed to be on the jury. 
One Irishman there was on the jury, who is said to have 
openly declared his dissent from the verdict, but he was 
not listened to. An Irish false witness against the bishop 
was heard and believed ; an Irish juryman, who was for 
acquitting the innocent, was not listened to, and might 
deem himself happy not to be punished for upholding the 
truth. 

"As soon as the jury, with one exception, had pro- 



* Accenting to the old English law, the jurors were to decide from their own knowledge, 
aided by the evidence, and the writ directed the sheriff " to summon a jury of twelve men from 
the neighborhood who best may know the facts." The bishop also challenged the jurors as 
being aliens, and not freeholders, as required by law, but the challenges were all disallowed. — 
G* Sullivan. 

t And men no* one of whom was worth twenty pence of revenue. 



2c6 Martyrs and Confessors 

nounced their unjust verdict, the judge pronounced the sen- 
tence that ' Cornelius Dovany, Bishop of Down and Con- 
nor, should be taken back to prison, and then drawn in a 
cart to the place of execution, there hanged on the gallows, 
and cut down while alive, embowelled, and his heart and 
bowels burnt, his head cut off, and his body divided into 
four parts.'* 

"The like sentence was passed on the priest Patrick. 
If you ask the cause, a different one was alleged in each 
case, but in reality there was but one — the Catholic faith ; 
and although his enemies suppressed this in his senteitte, 
in his death all-powerful truth drew, however unwilling, an 
acknowledgment ; for as the heretics loudly upbraided him 
with having been condemned, not for the faith, but for 
treason, he by an ingenious artifice preserved not his life, 
but his honor. 

"A petition was written in his name, stating that he 
lived in the province of Ulster at the time when the Earl 
of Tyrone involved that province and others in wars and 
forays, and neither on account of that sedition nor for any 
other cause had he avoided speaking with or meeting the 
earl or his followers, much less so after peace had been 
made. If in this he had erred, and if the Act of Oblivion 
published by the king, and pleaded by him, did not cover 
his offence, he thus craved pardon from the viceroy. This 
petition was sent in, and his life was promised to him in 
the name of the viceroy if he would write his name to the 
petition. 



* A certain pious woman, who used to carry food to the bishop and the priest, which was sup 
plied by the Catholics, after his sentence asked the bishop how he was in health. " I have 
not been better," said he, " these ten years, either in mind or body. My only wish now is that 
God will vouchsafe to take me to his heavenly kingdom by martyrdom, rather than per- 
mit me to be worn out in prison of old age. You, daughter, have done me many services, for 
which I thank you, as I may, and which God will reward. Do me this further service, I pray: 
When I am slain (as God grant I may be) have me buried in this, (showing her the Franciscan 
habit.) I value this frock, which I put on when I was young, more than the insignia of a 
bishop. ' ' — O'' Sullivan. 



In the Reign of y antes I 207 

"When Saul pursued the royal prophet with deadly 
hatred, (1 Kings xxii.,) and he, flying from the wrath of the 
king, turned aside to the priest Achimelech, and was re- 
freshed by him, and, being seen by an Edomite servant of 
Saul, fled elsewhere ; and when the priest was sent for by 
Saul and accused, saying, ' Why hast thou conspired 
against me, thou, and the son of Isai, and thou hast given 
him bread and a sword, and hast consulted the Lord for 
him, that he should rise up against me, continuing a trai- 
tor to this day ? And Achimelech, answering the king, 
said : And who amongst all thy servants is so faithful as 
David, who is the king's son-in-law, and goeth forth at thy 
bidding, and is honorable in thy house ? Did I begin to- 
day to consult the Lord for him ? far be this from me : 
let not the king suspect such a thing' against his servant ;' 
so Cornelius the bishop did not deny that he had been 
with Earl Hugh, but confidently denied it was any crime ; 
but if his adversaries, as they had the power, wrested it 
into a crime, he begged pardon of them and appealed to 
their clemency ; but if they desired his death, he besought 
them at least to spare his honor, and assign the true cause 
of his death. They were not adroit enough to avoid the 
snare, and, seeking to avoid the charge of cruelty, they 
made his life depend on the royal will, and then openly 
offered him life if, abandoning the Roman Catholic 
religion, he would embrace their sect. When the bishop 
heard this, he raised his voice, and called upon all present to 
witness that he died for the Catholic faith ; that he would 
betray himself and deny God if he were, for such an earthly 
offer, to abandon the faith.* Having thus obtained his 

* " The viceroy sent several times councillors and others to offer the condemned life and - 
reward, and especially to the bishop his bishopric, and to the priest a good living, if they would 
renounce the Catholic Church and the authority of the Roman pontiff, and acknowledge the 
king's supremacy. The bishop answered that it was far greater folly to try to persuade him, 
a man near eighty years of age, for the sake of a short term of happiness in this fleeting life, 
to incur eternal punishment, than to have advised the aged Eleazer, in order to avoid death, to 
eat swine's flesh. So also spoke the priest." — O' 'Sullivan. 



20 8 Martyrs and Confessors 

wish, and made his innocence clear, he despised this 
temporal life, and, eager for the death which awaited him, 
he expected with the lofty spirit of a Christian the triumph 
of the cross. 

" As is the case with martyrs, his piety increased with 
his worldly troubles, and in watching and prayer he await- 
ed the day when he should be called to die. That happy 
and wished-for day at length came. The 1st of February 
at four o'clock in the afternoon, he was called to mount 
the cart which, surrounded by guards, stood at the prison 
door. When the holy bishop came in sight of that 
triumphal chariot, he sighed and said, ' My Lord Jesus, 
for my sake, went on foot, bearing his cross, to the moun- 
tain where he suffered ; and must I be borne in a cart, as 
though unwilling to die for him, when I would hasten with 
willing feet to that glory ? Would that I might bear my 
cross and hasten on my feet to meet my Lord !' Turning 
to his fellow-sufferer, Patrick, he said, ' Come, my brave 
comrade and worthy soldier of Christ, let us imitate his 
death as best we may who was led to the slaughter as a 
sheep before the shearer.' Then bending down and kiss- 
ing the cart, he mounted up into it, and sat down with his 
back to the horses, and was thus drawn through the paved 
streets to the field where the gallows was erected.* 

" Doeg the Idumean may come with his emissaries, and 
slay the priest of the Lord ; the priesthood they cannot 
slay ; our religion they cannot take away, our faith they 
cannot uproot, our constancy they cannot weary : the more 
of us are slain, the more numerous we are. As Tertullian 
says (Apolog. c. 50) : ' The battle to which we are challeng- 
ed is before the tribunals ; and there, at the peril of our 
life, we fight for the truth. Victory is what is sought. 
That victory brings with it the glory of pleasing God, and 

* " Having crossed the river which washes the city, they came to the foot of the hillock on 
which stood the gallows." — C Stdlivan. 



In the Reign of y<xmes I 209 

the spoil of eternal life. Your cruelty profits nothing, but 
is rather an incentive ; we become the more numerous the 
more we are decimated ; our seed is the blood of Chris- 
tians.' This was well proved in the martyrdom of the bish- 
op ; for those Catholics who before his imprisonment and 
condemnation trembled at the sound of a falling leaf, who 
feared to meet a Catholic priest, much less a bishop, and 
Were slow to harbor one, lest they might thereby incur 
danger or the enmity of the rulers, now, when he was led 
to execution, poured out in a dense crowd from every door 
into the streets, and in the sight of the councillors, and to 
the indignation of the viceroy, fell on their knees. Men 
of the first rank, and the inhabitants of all the neighboring 
villages and castles, crowded as to a solemn sight ; they 
saluted with reverence the bishop as he passed in the cart, 
and begged his pontifical benediction. As they lamented 
his death, he gently consoled them, and with forcible words 
exhorted them to fortitude and constancy in the faith and 
all Christian piety. Many noble matrons came and la- 
mented the death of the bishop ; and as they perceived sev- 
eral of the king's council accompanying the procession and 
showing their hostility, they boldly exclaimed in their hear- 
ing that it ill became the king's councillors to turn execu- 
tioners. 

" May it be well with that citizen of Dublin who, as the 
bishop passed his house, fasting indeed from morning, but 
not fainting, brought him out a cup of wine, and prayed 
him to bless him and his household. We may believe he 
remembered the vision in which his mother taught King 
Lamuel : ' Give strong drink to them that are sad, and wine 
to them that are grieved in mind : let them drink, and 
forget their want, and remember their sorrow no more.' 
(Proverbs xxxi. 6, 7.) 

" But Cornelius, because he grieved not, but rather ex- 



210 Martyrs and Confessors 

ulted as a giant to run his course, only tasted of the wine, 
and with his bound hands blessed the house of his friend, 
and the whole city of Dublin, whose citizens he praised for 
the fervor of their faith and their charity. 

" Cornelius, when he was come to the place of sacrifice, 
being solicitous for the constancy of his colleague, begged 
that Patrick might be put to death first ; for he feared lest, 
by the sight of his death and the wiles of the Calvinists, 
Patrick might be induced to yield to human weakness. But 
as his wish would not be granted, Father Patrick assured 
the bishop he might lay aside all fear for him. ' Though/ 
said he, ' I would desire to die first, and be strengthened in 
my agony by your paternal charity, since we are given up to 
the will of others, go, happy father, and fear not for my con- 
stancy ; aid me by your prayers with God, by whose help I 
am sure that neither death nor life, nor principalities nor 
powers, nor things present northings to come, nor any other 
creature, shall separate me from the love of Christ, or from 
my companionship with you.' Rejoiced at these words, 
Cornelius threw himself on his knees, but had only breathed 
a hasty prayer (which yet reached God in heaven) when the 
councillors, the captain and guard called out to make an 
end quickly. The field, situated to the north of the city, 
which would easily hold 3000 persons, was crowded. 
The executioner was an Englishman and a Protestant, (for 
no Irishman could be found who would stain himself with 
the blood of the bishop,*) who was condemned to death for 
robbery, and was promised his life for acting as executioner 
on this occasion. Yet, though he had thus purchased his 
life, he was touched with reverence and compassion for the 
gray hairs of the bishop, and prayed his pardon, and with 
trembling hands adjusted the noose. The moment the 
bishop mounted the first step of the ladder, and his head 

* " The regular executioner, who was an Irishman, had fled."— O \Stdlivan. 



In the Reign of James I. 21 1 

was seen above the crowd, a great shout and groans burst 
from all the spectators. 

" Then the minister Challoner, furious at the cries of 
pity raised by the people, said to the bishop : ' Why delude 
ye the ignorant people ? Why end ye your life with a lie, 
and a vain boast of martyrdom ? Tell the multitude that 
ye are traitors, and that it is for treason and not for reli- 
gion ye suffer.' To these unjust words the bishop answer- 
ed : ' Far be it from us, who are about to appear before the 
tribunal of Christ, to impose upon the people. But also 
far be it from us to confess ourselves guilty of crimes of 
which our conscience tells us we are innocent. Nor yet 
do we vainly ambition the title of martyrs, though for us to 
die for Christ is gain. You know that you are yourself guilty 
of that prevarication of which you accuse us, for but a few 
hours ago, sent as you said by the viceroy, you offered us 
life and freedom if we would subscribe to your heresy. 
Leave us, then, son of darkness, and calumniate not our 
innocence.' 

"Then the minister departed and left the martyrs in 
peace. As they mounted the middle of the ladder, again 
there rose the cry of the people ; ■ and a third time, when 
he was about to be thrown off, the groans of those who 
beat their breasts rose louder than before. Thrice he 
prayed, as he stood there : once for all the bystanders ; 
secondly, for the city of Dublin, and all the Catholics of 
this kingdom, that they may serve God piously, faithfully, 
and perseveringly ; a third time he prayed for all heretics, 
and for his persecutors, that they might be converted from 
the evil of their ways. 

" May that prayer of thy martyr, O God ! ascend to the 
throne of thy power, and obtain for us fruits of justice 
and peace, that, errors and fears being removed, we may 
serve faithfully first our God and next our king. The 
skies gave back an answer (if I am not mistaken) that soon 



212 Martyrs and Confessors 

these tribulations should come to an end :* the blood of 
our Abel cries from the earth not for vengeance, but mer- 
cy. O thou sword of the Lord ! how long wilt thou not 
rest ? Be sheathed ; rest and be silent. 

" It is related that all the field was crowded with men, 
' women, and children, and when the martyr was dead all 
struggled to carry away some relic, either a scrap of his 
clothes, or a drop of his blood, or a fragment of bone or 
skin ; yet, though all crowded and struggled, no one was 
hurt ; but he was deemed most happy who was able to 
carry off the head of the bishop, deemed more precious 
than gold or precious stones. f Let us, with the doctors 
of Catholicity, venerate in the flesh of the martyrs the 
wounds they have received for the name of Christ ; let us 
venerate that virtue which conquers the world; let us 
venerate their ashes, the seed of life to rise again ; let us 
venerate the bodies which have taught us to despise death 
for the faith. St. Gregory teaches us (lib. vi. indie. 15, 
epist. 23) that the Christians of old held as a great and sacred 
gift not only a cloth stained with the martyrs' blood, but 
even one that had been laid on their tomb ; and the same 
Gregory sent to King Richard a little key in which was 

* Alas ! the good Bishop Roothe's anticipations were fallacious. The sword of the Lord 
was not ?,heathed for one hundred years more, and Bishop Dovany and his companion were 
followed by hundreds of other martyrs ; but as the seed was abundant, so has been the har- 
rest. The blood-rain of martyrs' blood has made the spiritual harvest in Ireland abundant. 

t " The bishop's head was hardly cut off when an Irishman seized it, and, rushing into the 
centre of the crowd, was never found, although the viceroy offered a reward of forty pounds of sil- 
ver. The Catholics gathered up his blood, and contended for his garments, despite the re- 
sistance of the soldiery. The priest Patrick followed the same road, singing, as he mounted 
the ladder, the canticle of Simeon, ' Now, O Lord ! dismiss thy servant in peace,' and, after 
the example of the bishop, he prayed for the bystanders, blessed them, and forgave all his 
enemies. The rope being put round his neck, he hung for a short time, was then cut down 
half-alive, mutilated, and cut in pieces. The soldiers, warned by the loss of the bishop's head, 
resisted the unarmed crowd, who strove to catch the martyr's blood and other relics, and 
wounded many. The day after, the bodies were buried at the gallows' foot, but in the stillness 
of the night were removed by the Catholics to a chapel not defiled by heretical worship." — 
O 'Sullivan. 

Mooney says : " Their remains are deposited in the cemetery of St. James, together with 
those of many others whom I shall mention later, because all the churches of the city are de- 
filed." 



In the Reign of James I 213 

a small portion of the iron of St. Peter's chains which had 
touched his sacred body, that, as he said, ' that what bound 
his neck for martyrdom may free you from sin.' (Lib. x. 
indie. 5, epist. 7.) And the same Gregory sent to the 
noble lady Savinella a similar key, ' in which,' said he, ' is 
contained the blessing of his chains, that, being hung on 
your rieck, by his intercession, what brought him martyr- 
dom may bring you the grace of forgiveness.' Far differ- 
ent from the sectaries of this age, who, that they only may 
be honored by men, do away with all veneration of the 
saints and their relics. 

" One circumstance is here worthy to be noted, that our 
Cornelius, who, many years before, was consecrated bishop 
on the feast of the Purification of the Virgin, was called by 
death to the rewards of the other life on the vigil of the 
same feast and the day dedicated to St. Brigid, who has 
always been invoked as patron by our whole nation, and 
for whom he had a peculiar devotion. It is also worthy of 
remark that the bishop was condemned to death on the day 
(the 28th January) on which died Charlemagne, the great 
defender of ecclesiastical freedom. 

" Lest their names, inscribed in heaven, be forgotten on 
earth, let their epitaph be here recorded, that the reader, 
meeting with the record of the saints, may remember that 
the 1st of February, in the year of our salvation 161 1, was 
the day on which was born to a better life the blessed mar- 
tyr Dovany, Bishop of Down and Connor, of the Order of 
Saint Francis, who for many years watched with pastoral 
care over the Catholic flock in Ireland, and, after many 
sufferings, was sentenced to death in the Chichestrian per- 
secution by D. Sibthorpe,* and by martyrdom passed to 
his rest. 



* O'Suhivan says, Dominick Sarsfield was the judge, " one most cruel to priests and Catho- 
lics," and that his colleague, though a Protestant, feigned illness, not to take part in the con- 
demnation of the bishop, who was innocent. 



214 Martyrs and Confessors 

"The same day and year, the blessed martyr Patrick 
Locheran, priest, under the same viceroy, Arthur Chi- 
chester, and D. Sarcevilius, judge, suffered death. Each 
might have secured his life if he would abandon the Catho- 
lic religion and the obedience of the holy Roman Church 
and embrace Calvinism.* 

" Some relate that Sarcevil was the judge who sentenced 
the bishop ; Sibthorpe, the priest. It differs little, for they 
both sat in judgment and concurred in the sentence. It is 
related that, when the bishop protested against being tried 
by a lay-tribunal, Sarcevil alleged to him the example of 
Christ, who submitted to the judgment of Pilate ; to whom 
the bishop answered : ' If you blush not to imitate Pilate, 
it irks not me to imitate Christ, for he is the way, the 
truth, and the life.' " 

Annis 1613, 1614, and 1617. 

REV. BERNARD GRAGAN AND OTHERS, O.S.F. 

Father Mooney, continuing his account of the monas- 
tery of Multifarnham, part of which is given under the 
year 1601, gives the following account of others who there 
suffered for religion, and although it refers to various years 
I will here give it in extenso : 

"In the year 1607, Brother John Gragan, father pro- 
vincial, was arrested, and in 1608 accused of high treason, 
as knowing of the flight of the Earls of Tyrone and Tyr- 

* Father Patrick Locheran was accused of having " traitorously gone to Belgium in the same 
ship with the fugitives, Earls O'Neill and O'Donnell." He answered that he had crossed to 
Belgium to study, in the same ship, but before O'Neill and O'Donnell did, and therefore was 
ignorant of their flight. On being asked whether he would be tried by a jury of twelve men, 
he answered, " If the twelve men were to be Irish, they would themselves be in danger ; if 
they were Protestants, they might be induced by fear or reward to commit sin, and condemn 
him. Th'at he did not desire that worthy Catholics should be brought into danger, or heretics 
induced to sin. In a judge should be found equity and justice." Then Sarsfield said, " As 
you decline the trial appointed by law, the decision of the cause rests with me," and proceed- 
ed to pronounce sentence. — O 'Sullivan, torn. iv. cap. xviii. 



In the Reign of yames I. 215 

connell, and condemned. His life and liberty were then 
offered to him if he would join the heretical church, but 
in vain ; his constancy, prudence, and religious modesty 
much edified the Catholics, and gained the affection even 
of his adversaries. At length, at the intercession of the 
Baron of Delvin, who had been accused of the same crime, 
but had obtained the king's favor, through fear of those 
who had escaped, Brother John obtained his life, and 
was set at liberty, having given security to appear if called 
upon. 

" At another time, Sir Dudley Loft us, son of the chan- 
cellor, and Sir Richard Graves, invaded the monastery and 
carried away prisoners — Brother Cormac O'Gabhun, prior 
of the province, who, being blind, had lived for six years in 
that monastery ; Brother Philip Cluaine, who is now (1621) 
living, an old man, in Kilconnell ; Brother Terence Ma- 
canaspie, who died in prison in Dublin ; Brother Manus 
Oge O'Fidy ; and Brother Coghlin Oge MacAliadha. 
These two last they left by the way in the town of Ba- 
leathbeg ; the others they took to Dublin and threw into 
prison, where, after a year and a half, two of them, who 
survived, were set at liberty on giving security to appear 
if called on. 

" In the year 1613, Patrick Fox, Viscount of Westmeath, 
invaded the monastery and carried off the vicar of the con- 
vent, Brother Bernard Gragan, a priest, who lay in prison 
in Dublin for a whole year, and at length was sent an exile 
into France, and died at Rheims, in Brittany, partly from 
the fatigue of the journey and the sea, partly from infirmi- 
ties contracted in prison. 

"In the year 1614, Sir Oliver Lambert took prisoner 
Brother James MacGrollen, a holy priest of the same con- 
vent, who was seeking alms through the country, and he 
was long detained in prison in Mullingar ; being then sent 
to Dublin Castle, he remained there a long time ; but as, 



216 Martyrs and Confessors 

notwithstanding many threats and promises, he remained 
constant, he was sent into exile, and remained some time in 
Rouen, whence, returning into Ireland, he was by pirates 
at sea wounded in the face, but, his wounds being cured, 
he still lives in Ireland. 
$ "In 1617, there was taken prisoner, while he was col- 
lecting alms for the convent, by a certain local tyrant 
whose name was Daniel,* another brother of the same con- 
vent, whose name was Charles Crossan, a priest. So also 
in like manner was taken in this year Brother Didacus 
Conor, a priest, while, through obedience, he was collect- 
ing alms. These two are yet in prison. f So much /or 
this theatre of persecution and unarmed and innocent 
endurance." — Mooney, p. yj. 



WILLIAM MEDE 

" Was a citizen of Cork, distinguished for his learning 
and wealth, and was patron and protector of the rights and 
immunities of that city.J He persuaded his fellow-citi- 
zens, during the time between the death of Queen Eliza- 
beth and the proclamation of King James, to resume the 
public practice of the Catholic religion, which had been 
long omitted, and thereby drew upon himself a most bitter 
persecution on the part of the heretics. He was put upon 
his trial for treason, but the twelve jurors acquitted him ; 
and, to punish them for thus refusing to condemn the in- 
nocent, they were toimented in all sorts of ways, publicly 
paraded through the city with an inscription on their fore- 
heads calling them perjurers, and being finally thrown into 
prison, were there kept till they paid a heavy fine. Even 
so the hatred of his enemies was not appeased, and William 

* There is a word before Daniel which is illegible. t Mooney wrote in 1624. 

X Our author probably means he was mayor. 



In the Reign of y antes I. 217 

was compelled, through regard for his life, to go into a vol- 
untary exile, where, after several years, he piously slept in 
the Lord, at Naples, in 16 14." — Philadelph. 



Anno 1615. 

SIRS BERNARD AND ARTHUR O'NEILL, RODERICK AND GOD- 
FREY O'KAHAN, ALEXANDER MACSORLEY, KNIGHTS, 
AND REV. LEWIS OLABERTAG. 

" Sir Arthur Chichester devised this plan to entrap 
some of the inhabitants of Ulster who were most remarka- 
ble for their courage and talent ; but he the more thirsted 
for the blood of the men of Ulster because he had himself 
been granted large possessions in Ulster by the ' king. 
He seized upon an idle, dissipated man, who had often 
stopped at Bernard O'Neill's, and had him condemned to 
death. He then promised him a pardon and large reward 
if he would accuse Bernard and the others whom I am 
about to name. The desperate gambler, unmindful of the 
many benefits he had received from Bernard, consented. 
Then the viceroy ordered Bernard and Arthur O'Neill, 
Roderick O'Kahan, Godfrey O'Kahan, Alexander MacSor- 
ley, knights of high lineage, and Lewis Olabertag, a priest, 
to be seized and thrown into prison, as accused of high 
treason. The witness, to make this out, swore that they 
had conspired to take some forts in Ulster, garrisoned by 
English and Scotch, and to slay the guards. The knights 
answered that the testimony of one man of infamous cha- 
racter was not enough to convict them. They were tor- 
tured, but confessed nothing. But as they were tried by 
twelve English and Scotch Protestants, who had also re- 
ceived land in Ulster, and did not wish to have Catholic 
neighbors, they were at once found guilty. The viceroy 



218 Martyrs and Confessors 

referred the sentence to the king, who sent back for an- 
swer that a free pardon should be granted to the knights 
and the priest if they would renounce the Catholic religion. 
But they boldly made answer they never would accept that 
condition. That night they mutually exhorted each other 
to endure death for Christ. The priest gave sacramental 
absolution to the others. The next day, having hung a 
short time, they were cut down, embowelled, their entrails 
burnt, their bodies cut in four parts and exposed in public 
places. This happened in the year of our Lord 1615. 
About the same time Sir Patrick O'Murry * Knight, and 
Connor O'Kieran, priest, were put to death in like manner 
on the same charge." — G Sullivan, p. 260. 



Anno 1617. 

REV. THOMAS GERALDINE, O.S.F. 

Father Mooney, speaking of the Castle of Dublin, says : 
" So also Brother Thomas Geraldine, of our order, a 
preacher, and some time commissary of our province, suffer- 
ed much during a long imprisonment,! and at length died 
in the Castle of Dublin, worn out with the hardships of the 
prison, in the month of June, % in the year 161 7 ; and the 
citizens, having begged his body, celebrated his obsequies 
for three or four days with great devotion, to the great sur- 
prise and indignation of the heretics, who yet could not 
prevent the devotion of the people ; and at length his re- 
mains were laid in the same cemetery, (that of St. James,) 
near those of the bishop, (Dr. O'Dovany.)" — Mooney, p, 
68, and Philadelph. and Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 



* " Omurius." 

+ Philadelphus says he was several times imprisoned. 

X Philadelphus says the 12th of July. 



In the Reign of James I. 219 

REV. WILLIAM DONATUS, (OR DONAGH.) 

He is mentioned in a letter, preserved in Stoneyhurst 
College : 

" ' A large reward had been offered for the head of Dr. 
Matthews, Archbishop of Dublin, or that of Dr. Kearney, 
Archbishop of Cashel, dead or alive. The chancellor, 
Adam Loftus, personally conducted a most rigorous search 
in Dublin, as Archbishop Matthews was supposed to be 
there.' The letter continues : ' But the archbishop, by 
God's will, was out of their way ; but in the search many 
others were apprehended and cast into prison, both eccle- 
siastics and others. One regular, and another secular 
priest, by name William Donatus, who, though lying ill in 
bed, because he was thought to be the chaplain of the 
archbishop, was compelled to get up and accompany the 
others to prison, where he yet lies.' "■ — Renehan, Collections, 
vol. i. p. 266. 



REV. DERMITIUS BRUODIN, O.S.F. 

" Dermid Bruodin was born in Thomond, in Ireland, of 
a family noted for many generations for piety, learning, 
and hospitality, and became a member of the Franciscan 
Order. His father was Miles Bruodin, owner of Mount 
Calary, a man much esteemed by Cornelius O'Brien, Earl 
of Thomond, (Clare ;) his mother was Joanna Mahony, or 
Matthews. He was no longer a boy when, having learned 
the rudiments of learning, he lost his parents, and, having 
always intended to devote himself to God, entered the 
cloister among the strict observers of evangelical poverty 
— the Franciscans — as a novice in the convent of Inisheen, 
in Clare. He was a model of virtue, assiduous in prayer, 
ready for every exercise of humility, constant in fasting, 
and daily afflicting his body with the discipline. 



220 Martyrs and Confessors 

•' Having made his profession, by order of his superiors 
he proceeded to Spain, and there, among the sons of the 
province of St. James, progressed alike in learning and 
piety. When his studies were completed, he was advanced 
to the priesthood, and desired at once to devote himself to 
e the saving of souls in his country, afflicted by heresy. 
His superiors agreed to his request, and Dermid, trusting 
in the Cross of Christ, embarked in his Franciscan habit, 
(for neither danger nor the entreaties of his friends could 
ever induce him, as the other missionaries, to exchange his 
habit for a secular dress,*) and, by the providence of God, 
he landed at a port near the place of his birth, near the Is- 
land of St. Sinnanus, called Inniscatha, in the middle of 
the river Shannon, in the year 1575. 

" The moment Bruodin touched his native soil he gave 
thanks to God, and began his apostolic labors among his 
friends and relatives, (and then, as now, there were as 
many Catholics as Bruodins,) and labored with such zeal, 
where before they had been suffering from a dearth of pas- 
tors, that the Catholics in all the baronies of Clare were 
provided with spiritual food. Dermid had thus labored 
for many years in the vineyard of the Lord, when the 
enemy of human salvation sought, by means of the satel- 
lites of Elizabeth, to put a stop to his zealous efforts. Di- 
vers man-hunters were therefore employed throughout 
Clare to catch in their nets the zealous preacher, whose 
zeal, indeed, for martyrdom would long before have 
brought him into their hands had he not been prevented 
by his superiors. 

" While the search was most eager Dermid was employ- 
ed preaching and catechising not far from Limerick, in a 
place, however, which was mountainous, and generally safe 
from the excursions of the heretics. However, his pre- 

* It is to be remembered that he dwelt in Clare, a remote district, inhabited exclusively by 
Catholics, and whither the queen's soldiers rarely penetrated. 



In the Reign of James I. 221 

sence there came to the knowledge of the commander of 
the garrison in Limerick, who sent some musketeers to 
arrest him, and they seized him in the act of preaching 
from the top of a mound. He received many blows from 
the fists and sticks of the soldiers, and, with his hands tied 
behind him, was driven to Limerick, in the year 1603. 
Bruodin, who had been weakened by his voluntary fasts, * 
was thrown into prison, where for four months he endured 
much, for it was forbidden under a heavy penalty for any 
Catholic to speak to him or give him any assistance. 

" At the end of this time he was brought before the 
king's judges, and being asked many idle questions, Der- 
mid boldly answered that his dress showed he was a 
Catholic and a Franciscan ; that as to his name, profession, 
labors, and friends, they were abundantly known to those 
who had taken him when preaching ; that therefore there 
was nothing to be done but either to set. him free, or by 
torture to try his constancy in the profession of the Cath- 
olic faith. 'Well,' said the judge, 'you shall have your 
wish.' By his order the Franciscan habit was torn off him, 
and he was severely flogged by two executioners ; then his 
hands were tied behind him, and he was lifted up by them off 
the ground. While he was thus tortured he was asked by 
a certain petulant preacher whether he felt pain ? He an- 
swered, ' I feel pain indeed, but far less than my Lord and 
Saviour Jesus Christ, for whose cause I suffer, endured for 
me.' Then, let down from the rack, he was taken back to 
prison. 

" At the time when Father Bruodin was being tortured 
there arrived in Limerick Donatus O'Brien, the powerful 
chieftain of his own race, and Earl of Thomond. He was 
a man of great influence both in England and Ireland. 
Touched by the affection which the O'Briens always bore 
to the Bruodins, he sought to devise some way of freeing 
Father Dermid from further tortures and the death which 



222 Martyrs and Confessors 

threatened him. With this view, the earl persuaded the 
judges that Dermid was a fool, with whom he often amus- 
ed himself, and, to prove this, he adduced as an argument 
that no one but a fool would go about in public with his 
head shaved, and a long beard and a long habit, contrary 
to the usual practice of all the other popish priests in Eng- 
land and Ireland. The judges, either persuaded, or, as I 
think, not wishing to offend the powerful earl, (whose fidel- 
ity and services to the crown were well known,} set Der- 
mid at liberty, who was indeed nearly worn out with tor- 
tures and suffering. Dermid, thus set free as a fool for 
Christ, returned to his native district and prudently re- 
sumed his labors in Clare. Protected everywhere by be- 
ing known as the mad monk, and favored by Earl O'Brien, 
(a man nominally a heretic, but a Catholic in his heart,) he 
passed safely through the persecuting English at Inish* 
and elsewhere in the province, and gained many to Christ, 
ever wearing the Franciscan habit, and often rejoicing to 
bear insults and derision for the honor of Christ. At 
length, weighed down with years, and worn out with la- 
bors, Bruodin, fortified with the sacraments of the church, 
slept in the Lord, in his Franciscan convent of Inish, the 
9th August, 161 7. The other friars had been expelled in 
1575, and he had lived there alone with his servant for the 
three last years of his life." — Bruodin, lib. iii. cap. xx. 

As this is the last date given in Philadelphus, I shall 
here insert all those martyrs to whose triumph, being un- 
certain of the year, he does not give any date. 

REV. NICHOLAS YOUNG, 

"A priest from the village of Newton, near Trim, a 
venerable old man, for hatred of his religion was cast a 

* The Franciscan convent of Inish, or Inis-Cluan-ruada, founded, according to Ware, by 
Donagh Carbrac O'Brian in the year 1240 for Minorites, by the river Forgy. 



In the Reign of James I. 223 

prisoner into the Tower of Dublin, where he ended his 
days, worn out with suffering and misery, about the 

year ." 

— ♦ — 

JAMES DOWDALL, 

" One of the leading men of the municipality of Athboy, 
was frequently summoned to Dublin by the chancellor to 
answer for his profession of the Catholic faith, and chiefly 
because he harbored priests. He was several times thrown 
into prison, where he patiently spent many years. At 
length, as the noble-minded man could neither be induced 
to bend to the times nor abandon his determination of pa- 
tient endurance, the enemies of the faith let him go for a 
time, when he returned home, and peaceably died there 
about the year ." 

JAMES DOWDALL (ANOTHER) 

"Was a merchant of Drogheda, who, being in England 
on business, was arrested, and being called upon to swear 
to the queen's supremacy, he ingenuously confessed his 
faith, and declared he was a Catholic, for which cause he 
was put to death in the city of Exchester,* and his tomb is 
said to be celebrated even to this day for favors obtained 
there." 



PATRICK BROWNE, 

"A distinguished citizen of Dublin, had been reared 
up from his youth in heresy, but by a special grace of God 
was received into the church ; and for the profession of 
the faith he suffered in Dublin, for nearly twenty years, a 

* So printed in the original, in the margin. It is Exeter, as given in the text " Exomensi." 
Bmodin gives the date of his death as 20th September, 1600. 



224 Martyrs and Confessors 

most cruel imprisonment, which he bore with unshaken 
mind, but from which he contracted a fatal disease ; and, 
although he was at length, on giving security, allowed 
home for a time to recover from his disease, he was only 
delivered from it by a happy death." 



Here I may also insert an account given by Father 
Mooney, of which the exact date is uncertain, but which 
equally must have occurred about the close of Elizabeth's 
reign : 

REV. CORNELIUS. 

" The convent of Athskelin (Askeaton) is said to have 
been founded by the Earl of Desmond, and for a long time 
there have not been any monks there, because, during the 
war which the aforesaid earl waged against the English, 
many cruelties were practised on the brethren of that con- 
vent, and several of them suffered martyrdom at the hands 
of the English soldiers under Nicholas Mally ; but I could 
not learn their names with accuracy, except of one priest, 
whose name was Brother Cornelius, whose relics are inter- 
red in the chapter-house of the convent." — Mooney, p. 46. 



Anno 1618. 

REV. JOHN O'HONAN, O.S.F. 

" The Rev. John O'Honan was a native of Connaught, a 
priest, and a member of the Franciscan order. After he 
had spent many years in religion, and in the charge of the 
pastoral office among the afflicted Catholics of Leinster, he 
was taken by the English heretics in Dublin. 

" After seven weeks' imprisonment, despising the honors 
and rewards which were offered to him in the name of the 



In the Reign of Charles I. 225 

king if he would renounce his faith, he was first cruelly 
tortured, and then hung and cut in four parts, and so glo- 
riously triumphed on the 14th October, 16 18." — Bruodin, 
lib, hi. cap. xx. 

REV. PATRICK O'DYRY. 

" He was a native of Ulster, and a priest, and received 
the crown of martyrdom at Derry, of St. Columbanus, for 
having disobeyed the iniquitous law of Elizabeth and 
James.* He preferred to suffer tortures, the ignominy of 
the scaffold, and the cutting of his body in four parts, 
rather than deny the truth. He died, venerable for age 
and virtues, the 6th January, 1618, and, as we may piously 
trust, enjoys a crown of glory with the saints." — Bruodin, 

ut supra. 

— ♦ — 

Anno 1632. 

FATHER EDMUND DE BURGO, O.P.P. 

" Father Edmund de Burgo departed to Christ in the 
year 1632.! He was an Irishman, of noble family, son of 
the brother of the Dynast of Mayo, a man of great humility, 
and rich in a spirit of holy poverty. He was a great op- 
ponent of the heretics, many of whom he converted to the 
unity of the church, wherefore the heretics turned his 
convent into a den of thieves, but Father Edmund, partly 
from reverence for his person and partly fear of the influ- 
ence of his family, they after a time set at liberty." — Mon. 
Dom. 

" He had received the habit in the convent of Burishool, 
in the county of Mayo, and was a model of penance. He 
wore a chain of iron round his waist, and slept on the ground 

* That making it treason for mor.ks and priests to reenter the kingdom. 
f Hib. Dom. gives the date as 1633 ; but in the Monumenta Dominicana it is printed 
1632. He was a monk, but not a priest. 



226 Martyrs arid Confessors 

or on a little straw, with a stone for a pillow, and, allowing 
himself only a few hours of sleep, spent the rest of the day 
and night in prayer. He frequently fasted on bread and 
water, and in the depth of winter attended the chapel with 
bare feet. By a singular grace of God, although noble and 
brought up in the midst of the pleasures of this world, he 
preserved his virginal chastity to his dying day. He had 
a singular devotion for the rosary of the Blessed Virgin, and 
at the striking of every hour knelt down in prayer." — Acta 
Capituli Generalis Romce, 1656, ap. Hib. Dom. 



Anno 1633. 

REV. ARTHUR MACGEOGHEGAN, O.P.P. 

" The venerable Father Arthur MacGeoghegan, after he 
had completed his studies in Spain,* and transacted with 
much prudence the business of the order entrusted to him, 
sailed (from Lisbon, where he had remained for some time 
in the Dominican convent of our Blessed Lady of the Ro- 
saryf) to return to his own country, but, being taken on 
the road by the heretics and thrown into prison in London, 
was tried, as was usual, for high treason, J and also for 
having said in Spain that ' it would be lawful to kill the 
King of England ;' but he proved that he had not said so, 
but, arguing against the heretical doctrine denying man's 
free-will, ' that if it were true it would be an excuse for the 
greatest crimes, even killing a king.' Nevertheless, he was 
condemned and taken to the place of execution, where, 
hiving publicly proclaimed his faith, and that he was a 
Dominican, he was hung, and cut down while yet alive, 
his heart and entrails cut out and cast into the fire, and 
his body quartered, and thus gloriously completed his con- 

* He was an alumnus of the convent of Mullingar. t Dom. a Rosaria 

t " For returning, having been ordained beyond the seas." 



In the Reign of Charles I. 227 

fession of Christ." — Ex Act. Cap. Gen. 1644, ap. Mon. Dom. y 
and Dom. a Ros. ap. Hib. Dom. 

De Burgo adds that Father MacGeoghegan had been 
sent to Ireland to obtain students for the Dominican Col- 
lege of Lisbon, which had been founded a few years before, 
namely, in 161 5, for the purpose of educating priests for 
the Irish mission. His death as he was passing through 
England of course hindered the execution of his design, 
but the fame of his martyrdom attracted many young Irish- 
men to the college from whence he came, so that it began 
from that date to flourish, and became a celebrated semi- 
nary of martyrs ; for within a very few years seven priests 
left it, who all received the crown of martyrdom, namely, 
Arthur MacGeoghegan, Gerald Dillon, Miler Magrath, 
^Eneas Ambrose O'Cahill, Michael O'Clery, Gerald Bagot, 
and Thaddasus Moriarty. — Hib. Dom. p. 419. 



Anno 1634. 

FRANCIS SLINGSBY. 

I will here insert an interesting account of a young 
convert who suffered imprisonment for the faith in 1634. 
I do so the more willingly as this contemporary account 
gives us a lively idea of the nature of those times. This 
account is taken from a MS. collection of letters in the 
Burgundian Library, which was taken from the library of 
the suppressed Jesuits. 

Francis Slingsby was the eldest son of Sir Francis 
Slingsby, Knight, an Englishman settled in Ireland, and 
Elizabeth Cuff. The family was a noble one settled in 
Yorkshire, and his father was a privy councillor in Ire- 
land.* The family were all Protestants. He was born to- 

* See the statement he gave when entering the English College in Rome, (Appendix.) Sir 
Francis Slingsby of Scrivin and Redhouse, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, who died in 1600, 
married Mary, daughter of Sii Thomas Percy, brother of the Earl of Northumberland. By 
h'**- he had many children. His eldest son, Sir Henry Slingsby, succeeded him in his English 
estates. The father of the subject of our memoir would appear to have been a younger son of 



228 Martyrs and Confessors 

ward the end of the year 1611 or the beginning of 1612, 
and was brought up in Ireland under the care of his pa- 
rents until his thirteenth year, when he was sent to Oxford, 
where he studied for five years, and distinguished himself 
in mathematics. In 1630, he left Oxford, and there is no 
information as to how he passed the three next years, fur- 
ther than that he spent a part of them in travel. Up to 
this time he had been an unshaken Protestant, but in his 
twenty-second year he began to conceive doubts of the 
truth of that religion, and determined to seek the truth, and 
by the grace of God to embrace it. His conversion was 
certainly completed in Rome, as we gather from several 
passages, and that when he was in his twenty-second year, 
but whether it was commenced in that city is not stated. 

His intimate friend, Father Spreul, whom he had him- 
self converted, thus describes his conversion : 

" It is worthy of remark that in his conversion to the 
Catholic faith he not only gave his whole time and atten- 
tion to the prudent and sincere investigation of the truth, 
carefully examining the testimonies of the fathers on the 
controversies of our day, but sought to learn the will of 
God by continual and fervent prayer, frequent fasts, and 
abundant alms ; so that he was strengthened to overcome 
all the allurements of the world, the hope of honors and 
dignity, and the indignation and loss of friendship of his 
friends. He was no sooner received into the church in 
Rome than he went through a course of the spiritual exer- 
cises of St. Ignatius, and at their conclusion, in obedience 
to the divine inspiration, he determined to renounce the 
inheritance of his father, and embrace the institute of the 
society, in which to live ; and this resolution he adhered to 
unshaken, notwithstanding the greatest difficulties, during 

this Sir Francis. He says in the statement his maternal grandmother was " soror " of the 
Earl of Northumberland. He must either have made a mistake, or used " soror" in the sense 
of first cousin. — See Life of Sir H. Slingsby, printed, Edinburgh. 1806. 



In the Reign of Charles I. 229 

eight years that he remained in the world, and by a re- 
markable force of mind he strove after religious perfection 
by a most exact observance of our rules while living with 
laics and heretics at court and at home." — Letter of Father 
Spreul. 

His friends were naturally much annoyed at his conver- 
sion, which he did not conceal ; indeed, he ever most 
openly professed his faith and returned thanks to God for 
the grace he had received, as Father Spreul mentions : 
" Our generous athlete so boldly overcame all these diffi- 
culties that he not only openly professed the Catholic re- 
ligion, but gloried in the signal grace divinely granted to 
him, and ever gave thanks to God for it. And this is the 
more worthy of notice, as many after their conversion are 
allowed to profess the Catholic religion, not openly, but 
in private." — Ibid. 

His father, thinking that his influence and that of his 
friends, and the prospect of the ruin which an adherence 
to the Catholic faith would cause to the young man's pros- 
pects, might induce him to return to the religion of the 
state, urged his return to Ireland ; and Francis, although 
firmly resolved to enter the Society of Jesus, and apparent- 
ly considering himself from this date as under obedience to 
the general of the order,* prepared to return to Ireland in 
obedience to his earthly father, and with the hope of con- 
verting his relations to the true faith. The following two 
letters, one from his father and one from his mother, 
written at this date, explain the reasons they urged : 

" My Son : If ever you thought I loved you, you may 
well think I took always more care for your soul than your 
body ; and if you do not think I have given you sufficient 

* " How promptly and with what resignation of his own will he left his country, his relations, 
and his possessions, notwithstanding the good he was doing, when he was called to Rome by 
the letter of the general ! And what a heroic act of obedience he then made, in fulfilment of 
the vow he had made in Rome, at the tomb of the blessed Aloysius, after his conversion J"— 
L titer of Father Spreul. 



230 Martyrs and Confessors 

motives for your return, wherein you may do your parents 
so good service ; in your first you judge uncharitably of me, 
in your second you deal uncharitably with me. I must 
needs acknowledge I have much offended God, in trusting 
too much to an arm of flesh and blood, as though by mine 
own endeavors I could attain my desire. But now I find 
my fault and feel my punishment. Our hearts are in the 
hands of God, to dispose of as he pleaseth ; you are now 
allowed and commanded to use all lawful means, and then 
refer the issue to him. These arguments might bring forth 
many good, feeling motives, and you know my education 
hath not been such as to give my tongue effectual persua- 
sions ; yet those might be sufficient to give you a sensible 
reason not to disregard my loving advice. If the defects I 
found in myself made me seek to redeem them in you, it 
may be a sufficient motive unto you to think how dearly I 
loved you, and that I be thus requited for all my care, tra- 
vail, and cost. My time by course of nature cannot con- 
tinue long, and will you shorten it by an unkind requital ? 
Take but this for your theme, and then comment upon it 
with such moving reasons as yourself can give and your 
own thought dictate to you, if your case were mine ; and 
be not partial, and let not this undue style make it with 
you disesteemed or derided. I have said enough if it pre- 
vail ; if not, too much ; and till I shall either see you or 
hear a good answer to this my letter you shall neither hear 
from me nor of me. 

" Sincerity is your best policy, and deal as plainly with 
me as I with you, and if you give me not great cause to 
the contrary, I shall ever remain 

"Your unfeigned loving Father." 
The following is the letter from his mother : 
" My dear Son : I have seen, read, and considered all 
your letters with the best of my poor judgment, written 
to your father and myself, both before and since your sick- 



In the Reign of Charles L 231 

ness, especially your long one of two sheets of paper, sign- 
ed with your own hand, but written by another ; whereby 
I perceive the great pains you took to be resolved, which 
zeal I trust the Lord will favor, how soever you may be mis- 
led. But although I cannot judge of controversy, yet I 
think you ought not to forsake your old father and me to 
enjoy the liberty of conscience which (if there be no remedy) 
you may enjoy here at home, as many other good subjects 
do. But you fear your father will be offended : much bet- 
ter may you bear that than we your longer absence, which 
I assure myself would bring us both with sorrow to our 
graves. My dear son, consider that our laws do not enforce 
men's consciences ; and therefore what cause can there be 
to absent yourself? If ever you took pity on my sorrows, 
add not unto them, but return to comfort me, whose eyes 
have ever fasted with expectation of it. Ah my son ! you, 
that ought not to turn away your ears from the prayers of 
the poor, are much more bound to regard the tears and 
supplications of your mother. I do beseech you with up- 
lifted hands to return by your nearest way, and not to think 
of passing through Spain. The infinite testimony I have 
had of your piety and obedience to both of us assures me 
you will be grieved that I cannot know the haste you will 
make home ; but, my dear child, let not that trouble you, 
for I am comforted in the confidence of it, and so are all 
your sisters. Your sister Willoughby is the mother of 
three children, and your sister Betty married ; but in all 
this I can take no true contentment till I see you. And 
if it please the Lord of mercy to permit that, then shall I 
say I have had one joyful day before my death. Fare- 
well, and all the good a mother's blessing can add unto you 
be heaped upon your head, my dearest child. 

" Yours, as you know." 

Various letters of his to Jesuit fathers give an account 
of his journey. 



232 Martyrs and Confessors 

To Father John Thompson, at Piacenza, he writes from 
Milan, the 25th May, 1634 : " We are now, God be praised, 
safely arrived at Milan, and have already taken places in a 
coach for Thurin." From St. Omer he writes, on the 14th 
July : " I arrived in Paris on Corpus Christi day, being the 
1 14th June, and remayned there until the 27th. I received 
from Father Talbot a pass which he had lying by him, 
which is yet of a fresh date, and I make use of it for my 
passage into England." 

He must have arrived in Ireland about the end of July. 
. On arriving in Dublin he waited on the Lord-Deputy 
Wentworth, as we learn from Father Spreul : 

" He called on the Lord-Deputy, Viscount Wentworth, 
(to pay his respects on his return,) who was nearly related 
to him, but a most bitter persecutor of Catholics ; and in 
presence of a crowd of heretical noblemen declared himself 
a Catholic, and when the lord-deputy attacked some arti- 
cles of the Catholic religion he boldly answered him. All 
this I was told by one of the royal chamberlains, who was 
present. 

" As his father, who had great influence in that kingdor** 
had founded great hopes of advancing his family on the pru 
dence and talents of his son, which had been praised by all, 
he left no stone unturned to withdraw him from the Catholic 
religion. He pointed out to him the shame and injury he 
would bring on an illustrious family ; that he would rende? 
himself incapable of holding any office or honor or dignity 
But he found that he produced no impression, although he 
held out good hopes of his being made a privy councillor, 
(which is the highest honor ;) for Father Francis, with sin- 
gular modesty and moderation, made answer only in these 
words of Christ, ' What shall it profit a man if he gain the 
whole world and lose his own soul ?' so that his father per- 
ceived that, like the apostle, he held all but as dirt that he 
might gain Christ, and that the only way to influence him 



hi the Reign of Charles I. 233 

would be to persuade him that the Catholic religion was 
false. And, having perceived in their daily discussions that 
he was far inferior to Father Francis in disputing on points 
of faith, he determined to take him to Dr. Usher, who was 
called Archbishop .and Primate of all the kingdom, who 
was considered and really was by far the most learned man 
among the sectaries, and who had acquired great authority 
by writing books against the Catholics. While he was 
disputing with the archbishop, it pleased God by a singular 
trial to test or rather to manifest his constancy in the 
Catholic faith ; for when the archbishop had objected many 
things against the faith, Francis's wonted promptitude and 
readiness in defending the orthodox faith suddenly deserted 
him, and the motives and reasons which had influenced 
him seemed suddenly blotted out from his mind, and he 
seemed to himself plunged in sudden mental darkness. 
In this anguish he raised his whole mind to God, begging 
his assistance and direction, when suddenly his mental 
darkness vanished and he felt most clearly the truth of the 
Catholic faith, and, falling on his knees, he prayed aloud to 
God that the earth might open and swallow him up if ever 
he failed to profess the orthodox faith taught by Christ and 
his apostles. Rising, he turned to the archbishop and 
asked if he would do as much for his faith ; but he hastily 
drew back, declaring Father Francis was not in his right 
mind, and rashly proclaimed his confidence in his faith. 
As many, even Catholics, blamed him for his act, I asked 
him why he had done so. He answered that he had done 
it intentionally and calmly, especially to convince his father 
of his firm resolution not to abandon the Catholic faith, and 
so to free himself from the continual importunities and 
vexations which hindered him from his spiritual exercises 
and private meditations. He gained, indeed, his object by 
this heroic act, but it produced at the moment very dif- 
ferent effects, for the lord-deputy and the archbishop 



234 Martyrs and Confessors 

were so irritated that he was that very day thrown into 
prison." 

Father Francis himself alludes to these events in a letter, 
dated Dublin Castle, January 21st, 1635, to Father Thomas 
Roberts,* SJ., English College, Rome, in the following 
words : 

" Reverend dear Father : This is the thirdf letter I 
have written to you since my coming into these parts. In 
my former I gave you an accompt of the conference which 
passed betwixt my lord-deputy and myself at my landing, 
After, I went into the country to my father, who received 
me with joy and much love. But since the conversion of 
my dear and hopeful brother he hath almost quite with- 
drawn his affection, and procured my imprisonment in the 
Castle of Dublin. My mother and one of my sisters are 
not far from the kingdom of heaven, and there is little pro- 
bability of gaining my father. I am prest with longing 
desire to know how you will dispose of me ; for if you say 
but ' Veni,' by the grace of God nothing but violence shall 
hold me. Dear father, pray for me, as I do continually for 
you, as the greatest benefactor I have in the world. I 
pray my humble respects to Mr. Scaevola,$ and my dearest 
love and respect to Mr. Fitzherbert, Mr. Southwell, Mr. 
Trandis, Mr. Milford, and Mr. Harvey." 

The following letter describes his imprisonment : 

"After he had been some days in prison, he was brought 
up to be examined before two privy councillors, and a 
double charge was made against him : 1. That he had 
spoken contumeliously of the Protestant religion ; namely, 

* Father Thomas Roberts's real name was Joseph Gerard. Father F. Slingsby signs this 
letter, and also several others, Lewis Newman. In other places he uses the name of Francis 
PercEus, or Perry. Priests and Catholics at this time constantly wrote under feigned names, 
to elude their enemies. 

f" The other two are lost. 

X I may here mention that Scaevola is the name always used for Father Muzio Vitelleschi, 
General of the Jesuits. The name after Southwell is difficult to decipher. 



In the Reign of Charles I. 235 

that it came out of the teachers of Henry VIII. 2. That 
he had endeavored to bring others to the Catholic faith, 
which by law was made treason. To the first he answer- 
ed that he had used those words but in jest, and privately 
to the husband of his sister, who had jestingly spoken 
words of contumely against the pope, to whom he had 
answered by a jest common in England. To the second 
he confessed that he had done his best to bring others to 
that only way of salvation which he had himself embraced. 
And when one of the councillors observed that by the law 
that was the crime of high treason, he answered, ' If that 
be so, I cannot deny I have done it, nor undo what I have 
done/ He was then taken back to prison. 

" Such was his calmness of mind, his modesty, and his 
gentleness while in prison that he won the affection even 
of the heretics, and greatly consoled the Catholics who 
visited him — and great numbers of Catholics flocked to 
visit him while in prison. 

" These latter he edified, not only by his constancy in 
professing the Catholic religion, and readiness to endure 
all things for its sake, but also by his pious discourses, and 
he thus moved many to a change of manner and a more 
holy life. One person in particular I know who' was 
moved by his words and example to a total change of life. 
While he remained in prison he was challenged to a dispute 
on faith by another heretical bishop, P. Bromwell, who was 
considered to excel in talents and learning. The bishop 
chose for the subject of the dispute the receiving of the 
Holy Eucharist under one species, for there is no con- 
troversy in which they think so easily to obtain the victory 
as in this. One of the leading men about the deputy's court 
told me of the subject chosen for the dispute, and invited 
me to be present, (for I was not at that time a Catholic ;) but 
when we both came to hear the argument the bishop 
would not let us be present, on which the nobleman (who was 



236 Martyrs and Confessors 

also a heretic) by whom I was invited openly said that it 
would seem as if the bishop were but little sure of the faith 
he undertook to defend, when he would not allow his co- 
religionists to be present. But in this dispute it happened 
very differently from the former one with the Primate, for 
I so clear a perception of Catholic truth was divinely vouch- 
safed to him that he most easily answered every objection 
of the bishop. How well he vindicated the Catholic reli- 
gion on this occasion may be gathered from this, that when 
I inquired from the only person who was present (who was 
a most bitter opponent of the Catholic faith) what had 
been said, and lamented that I had not been present, he 
said not a word of anything which the bishop had urged, 
but endeavored to slur over the whole matter, which he 
surely would not have done had he had the least chance of 
boasting. 

" Father Francis, too, afterward frankly told me that all 
had turned out as he could w T ish, for that he not only per- 
ceived most clearly interiorly that the bishop's arguments 
were unfounded, but there occurred to bis mind abundance 
of weighty arguments to demonstrate their falseness. 
When they perceived that there was no chance of Francis 
returning to their religion, they determined at least to pun- 
ish him by a lengthened imprisonment." — Letter of Father 
SprenL 

" As soon as it was known in Rome that he was in pri- 
son, Cardinal Barberini exerted himself to the utmost to 
obtain his liberty, and at last succeeded. He immediately 
wrote to the Queen of England,* and to her sister, the 
Duchess of Savoy, requesting the latter to use her influ- 
ence with her sister the queen to obtain Francis's liberty. 
At length he obtained, by his entreaties, that the Queen 
of England caused her confessor to write to Francis to sav 

# Henrietta Maria of France. 



In the Reign of Charles I. 237 

she would try to obtain what was sought. Thus, as it is 
thought, it came to pass that, instead of being sentenced tc 
exile, he was first transferred to the house of the Earl of 
Castlehaven, a Catholic, who had done much to obtain his 
freedom, there to be detained in custody, and at length set 
free." — Letter of another Jesirit, name lost. 

On the 1 2th of May, 1635, he was admitted to bail, to 
remain in Lord Castlehaven's house. On that day he 
wrote to Father Roberts (Gerard) : 

" Hoping every day to get my liberty, I deferred from 
time to time to write to you, being desirous to make the 
news the subject of my letter. 

" The superior* here laboreth to procure my stay in 
these parts, but, if you would know mine own affection or 
inclination of flesh and blood in this point, I will confess 
that I esteem Rome a paradise and this my purgatory ; but 
yet, as well in this as in all other things, obedience shall 
be the rule of my actions. My mother is well disposed to 
be reconciled to my father, but he remains obstinate." 

The last sentence probably refers to his father's indig- 
nation at the conversion of his brother, and his mother's 
tendencies toward Catholicity, (see letter of 21st Janu- 
ary, 1635,) but she was not finally converted till later, as on 
the 8th May, 1636, he writes to Father Roberts, (Gerard,) 
" My two kinswomen are not as yet entirely persuaded in 
judgment." 

After he had passed several months in the house of Lord 
Castlehaven, being at length fully restored to freedom, he 
proceeded to the castle of the dowager Countess of Kil- 
dare. His confessor, Father William Malone, mentions 
that " in a short time after his return to Ireland he had 
converted his mother, his younger brother, his sister, and 
several others ;" and adds : 

* The superior of the Jesuits in Ireland was Father Robert Nugent. See the Ml. Rtla» 
tio Brevis, eta, by Father Maurice Ward. Written 1643. 



238 Martyrs and Confessors 

"' His father was now advanced in yeass, and usually 
dwelt in Dublin. Although he avoided as much as possi- 
ble showing peculiar favor to his son, and would not allow 
him to dwell in the same house with him, fearing lest he 
should be supposed to be a papist, he yet freely conversed 
with him in private, and supplied him liberally with the 
means of satisfying his common wants. His love for his 
son sometimes went so far that Francis had great hopes 
his father would renounce his heresy ; wherefore he most 
freely rendered him every possible service. 

" By his father's desire he attended the courts, and acted 
for him in divers causes. These and other secular affairs, 
although contrary to his natural inclinations, he undertook 
cheerfully, always in the hope of ultimately gaining his 
father's soul ; and no doubt he would have succeeded had 
he remained longer in the kingdom, but, on account of 
fresh complaints which were made against him, and being 
again threatened with imprisonment, he was compelled to 
suddenly embark on board a ship for England, whence he 
wrote to his father most humbly, and fully explaining the 
reasons of his departure." 

Father Spreul further describes his mode of life in the 
interval between his liberation from constraint and his de- 
parture from Ireland : 

" He made a very different use of his liberty from that 
commonly made by youth ; for, having been prevented 
from practising many of his spiritual exercises in prison, 
when set free, like a flame which lay for a time compressed, 
bursts forth, he edified the whole city by his fervor and his 
truly angelic life. He took a lodging in Dublin, where he 
dwelt very privately, having much intercourse with the 
Jesuit fathers who then dwelt in that city.* He kept only 
one servant, and led a life which might shame many in the 

* They were all violently exiled in 1642. See that year. 



In the Reign of Charles I 239 

cloister, for no novice in the noviceship could be more ex- 
act in observing the distribution of his time. For this 
purpose he obtained from his father-confessor, according 
to the custom of the society (of Jesus,) a plan of fixed times 
for rising, praying, etc., which, through obedience, he ob- 
served exactly. Every morning he devoted an hour to 
mental prayer, on his bare knees ; then studied. During 
meals he listened to some pious book read by the servant ; 
he examined his conscience before dinner : he had a fixed 
hour for recreation, during which he entered into conver- 
sation with those of the family, speaking of God, of the 
lives of the saints, and other pious subjects ; and they all 
declared to me that they never were so edified as by his 
conversation. When his hour for recreation was over, he 
betook himself to his room, where he gave some time to 
an examination of himself distinct from the two others, and 
there pursued the studies he was ordered. His body he 
afflicted with disciplines and frequent fasts. He rarely 
left the house except on some business, and so eager was 
he to employ his time well that he could not bear to be a 
moment idle. According to the custom of the society, he 
approached the sacraments of penance and the Blessed 
Eucharist on every festival day, and so exactly conformed 
the whole tenor of his life to the institutes of the society 
that I venture to say that no one in any of our colleges 
was more exact in observing the rule than he, although liv- 
ing as his own master in the world. And he was so assidu- 
ous in reading the rules over and over again, that, like 
another Berchmans, he always carried them about with 
him, and that so secretly that, although continually among 
heretics, no one ever saw them, for he carried the rule 
sewed up in black silk in the top of his hat, which was 
made of beaver. Although Father Francis sought, by 
every means, to hide his admirable mode of life, for he 
wore a dress of silk and fur as became his rank and the 



240 Martyrs and Confessors 

station of his parents, yet he could not prevent the odor 
of his virtues being diffused abroad ; the more so as there 
was none, not only among the heretics, but even among 
the Catholics, who led such a life, and the praise of his 
virtues became a common subject of conversation. As it 
is the custom in our country for the sons of nobles, and 
especially their heirs, to live in great splendor, keeping 
many horses, devoting themselves to hunting and such 
other sports, when they saw a youth of noble birth, in the 
flower of his age, and brought up while a heretic in the 
midst of luxury, laying aside all these pleasures, although 
in themselves lawful, and cheerfully embracing a life alto- 
gether contrary to the ideas of the world, and that in the 
metropolis of the kingdom, where many of his relations 
and friends dwelt in the lord-deputy's court, not only 
the Catholics, who were very numerous in that city, but 
also the heretics, gave the greatest praise to Father Fran- 
cis, and called him a saint ; and of this I am an eye-wit- 
ness. It was by a singular providence of God that so pub- 
lic a theatre was assigned to him ; for many Catholics, by 
the example of his life, were confirmed in the Catholic 
faith, and others recalled to virtue. Many heretics, too, 
were converted by his means, among whom was myself, 
who write this, although unworthy of such a blessing. 
For I can sincerely declare that, though I labored much in 
examining into the truth, I found no motive so efficacious 
in inducing me to embrace the Catholic faith as the sanc- 
tity of life I perceived in Father Francis. And among 
many others converted by him to the faith, his younger 
brother, a youth of much promise, ingenuously confessed 
to me that his chiefest motive for abjuring his heresy was 
the religious regularity in prayer, sacred reading, and ex- 
amination of conscience which he saw in Father Francis. 
Nor did he make converts only by this holiness of life, for 



In the Reign of Charles I. 241 

he confuted the heretics by most weighty reasons, and 
showed great talent in all controversies of faith. 

"Although he desired to go into public as little as pos- 
sible, and only to serve God in the aforementioned exer- 
cises, yet when there was the least chance of saving souls 
he most readily deferred or abandoned any of his own 
business, nor did he ever show any labor or trouble in this 
work, serving equally freely the rich and the poor. He 
converted in Dublin a whole family to the faith — husband, 
wife, and children ; he also converted his own mother, bro- 
ther, sister,* and many others, to the number of not less 
than twenty, while he remained in Ireland, which is no 
small number if we consider the time and the difficulty of 
converting heretics." 

It appears that it was in November, 1635, that he was 
entirely set at liberty, for in a letter dated November 24th 
of that year he says, " Lately released from prison, after a 
full year." His sisters were not converted until 1636, for 
on the 8th of May he writes to Father Roberts, " My two 
kinswomen are not as yet entirely persuaded in judgment." 

The immediate cause of Francis's hasty departure from 
Ireland in 1636 was, as we have seen, the imminent danger 
of being again thrown into prison for having caused the 
conversion of his sister ;f but he had long meditated pro- 
ceeding to Rome to fulfil his original intention of becoming 
a Jesuit. He thought, however, that it might be desirable 
for him to remain some time longer in Ireland in order 
to conciliate his father, and so escape being totally disin- 
herited ; and Father Robert Nugent, the superior of the 
Jesuits in Ireland, was anxious to detain him on account 
of the good he was doing. The latter wrote from Ireland 
to Father Thompson in Rome on the 1st of March, 1636, 



4 It appears by a letter from Father Malone that one died in 1635. 

t '" He fled from the persecution raised against him by his relations on account of the con- 
version of his sister."— Father Spreul. 



242 Martyrs and Confessors 

offering to allow Mr. Slingsby to return to Rome, but re- 
commending that he should be left to settle his father's 
affairs. The general, however, Father Mutius Vitelleschi, 
anxious only for the spiritual advance of his intended 
future son in religion, wrote him to neglect all worldly 
considerations, and come at once to Rome. While, how- 
ever, this correspondence was going on, Francis was 
obliged to fly to England, and thence to France. This is 
narrated as follows by Father Spreul : " I should here men- 
tion a heroic act of Father Francis, when, leaving his 
country, his friends, and all that was dear to him in this 
world, he went to England. He had left Ireland without 
the knowledge of his father, who would have had recourse 
to the authority of the viceroy, and was therefore destitute 
of means for so long and arduous a journey. This he re- 
joiced at, from the great desire he had to abandon the 
world. He bought for himself in London a poor and. sim- 
ple dress, with the intention of proceeding to Rome on foot, 
and, if all other means failed, begging his way ; and this, 
no doubt, he would have done with as great fervor as the 
blessed Stanislaus, had it not been otherwise decided by a 
particular providence of God. Just as he was about to start, 
there arrived from Ireland a young nobleman whose virtue 
was well known to him, Lord Castlehaven, who proposed 
visiting foreign parts, as is the custom. Meeting Father 
Francis, whom he had known in Dublin, he never ceased 
importuning him until he agreed to accompany him, to his 
great profit, for the pious conversation and virtuous ex- 
ample of Francis produced a great impression on him. 
Nothing more clearly shows how gently but efficaciously 
he inclined the minds of others to virtue than the conduct 
of this young nobleman while travelling with Francis ; for 
it is commonly said those who travel rarely advance in vir- 
tue, and most gentlemen while travelling attend to any- 
thing rather than virtue. After they had examined such 



In. the Reign of Charles L 243 

objects of interest as were to be seen, they gave the rest 
of their time to the study of mathematics, in which he 
acted as teacher to the young count. Every week they 
approached the sacrament of penance, and never omitted 
to receive the Blessed Eucharist on Sundays and feast- 
days, and daily to devote some time to pious reading. 
This conduct was the more admirable, as the earl had at- 
tained to man's estate. He remained in France with the 
earl a considerable time,* when, on receiving a letter from 
the father-general, Mutius Vitelleschi, he prepared to pro- 
ceed to Rome, although the earl sought by all means to 
detain him, so that, not to offend one who had so obliged 
him, Father Francis explained to him his resolution of 
embracing a religious life. The earl was grieved at this 
beyond expression, not only because he lost his friend's 
society, but because he had intended him to marry his 
sister, a young lady of rare beauty and virtue, and who had 
a large dowry." 

The letter from the general above alluded to is probably 
the following, from Father Thomas P^oberts, (vere Joseph 
Gerard,) from Rome, dated 16th of May, 1637, written by 
order of the general to Slingsby : 

" He (' Scaevola,' that is, the general) read both yours 
and Mr. Nugent's with great attention ; and having well 
considered both the parts of your cause, and pondered also 
the weight of all the reasons alleged by Mr. Nugent for 
that part which he desired might take place, yet Scaevola 
persevered in his former opinion, and made choice of your 
speedy coming hither as the certain means of your much 
greater good, which (as he saith and ever hath said when 
we have talked of that matter) is most to be respected and 
much to be preferred before the temporal means which by 
your stay there and loss unto yourself (which would cer- 

* " Fere biennium." But this is a mistake, as the reader will see. 



244 Martyrs and Confessors 

tainly follow of it) you might gain. But Scaevola is and 
will be much better pleased with my friend alone, and with 
the internal riches which he will bring with him, and which 
cannot be taken from him, and which will be much the 
greater by this act of renunciation, than if with his mea- 
sure of interior goods he brought with him a much greater 
proportion of exterior riches. Therefore, it is his absolute 
desire that his Joseph do break away from the world, 
though he leave his cloak behind him." 

This was followed by a letter from the general himself, 
dated Rome, 23d of May, 1637, as follows : 

"Although I doubt not you have gathered, both from 
what I wrote to you in the month of October last year and 
from what I wrote to Father Nugent in March last, what 
I think of further delay and putting off of your journey, and 
that I desire nothing more than that you should proceed to 
Rome as soon as possible, nevertheless, because, perchance, 
you may think that I have been moved by the reasons you 
and Father Nugent have written to me and Father Thomp- 
son, and changed my opinions, I write these few lines (for 
Father Thompson will write more at length by my wish 
and desire) to say that I by no means approve what you 
have written as to deferring, and, as I understand it, alto- 
gether abandoning your journey ; and that I do not con- 
sider those reasons to be of sufficient weight, but that 
rather, casting aside all those impediments, you should fly 
hither to take up the cross of Christ, and, leaving your 
father's house, and all human relations, give yourself whol- 
ly to your Creator. 

" Having weighed the whole matter in God, I am alto- 
gether confident this course will redound to the greater 
glory of God, and your own salvation. 

" Our sweet Jesus, who hath cast on you the chains of 
his love, yet draws you on, and will benignly perfect the 
work which his infinite mercy hath commenced in you." 



In the Reign of Charles I. 245 

After Father Spreul's conversion in Ireland, by the 
advice of Francis, he had gone through a course of the 
spiritual exercises of St. Ignatius, under the direction of 
Father Malone ; and he then determined to enter into 
religion, and become a Jesuit. They then agreed to meet 
in France, and proceed to Rome together ; but Spreul fell 
very ill, and his friend Francis returned to Ireland, and 
tended him in his illness. 

The general Vitelleschi alludes to this in a letter dated 
Rome, 1 2th December, 1637, in which he says he (Francis) 
had been recalled to Ireland from the midst of his journey, 
and hopes he would soon come to Rome. As soon as 
Spreul was sufficiently recovered to bear the fatigue of the 
journey, they started for Rome, setting out on the 20th 
November, 1638. They made the journey chiefly on 
horseback, and Slingsby carried a great number of books 
with him on a sumpter-horse. His companion mentions 
that Francis always took the worst horse and dinner and 
bed, saying that the other's recent illness required the 
most care. It would appear that his brother Henry 
accompanied him this time to France, from the following 
passage in one of Father Spreul's letters : 

" When his brother Henry, whom he had converted to 
the Catholic faith, and who by his example attained to a 
high degree of Christian perfection, while being in the 
world, was about to return to Ireland from France, a few 
days before his departure the brothers began to discuss, in 
a friendly way, the subject of the surrender of his inheri- 
tance by Francis to his younger brother. The younger, 
having no vocation to a religious life, pointed out that it 
would be well for one of them to remain in the world, and 
continue the family name, (for they were the only two sons,) 
and afford some protection to the poor and oppressed 
Catholics, and he urged for this purpose he would need the 
paternal inheritance. Francis would rather that they both 



246 Martyrs and Confessors 

devoted themselves to God in religion, and gave all their 
means, after their fathers death, to found a college in 
Belgium for the education of youth in the Catholic religion, 
who, returning to their own country, would there preserve 
the faith, and be the noblest posterity of the founders. He 
agreed, however, to surrender all his inheritance to his 
brother on condition that the latter should pay four 
hundred gold crowns annually for a seminary in Belgium 
for educating Irish youth."* 

His companion relates the following instance of his 
extreme love of truth : 

" On our journey to Rome, as we passed Savona, some 
soldiers and other citizens of that place embarked in the 
ship in which we were proceeding to Genoa. When we 
arrived at the latter place, we were forbidden to disembark 
until it should be ascertained whether we had passed 
through Nice, where it was said (although untruly) that 
the plague was making great ravages. Those who had 
come from Savona, fearing lest if the truth were told we 
should all be kept in the ship, as it were in prison, for a 
fortnight in the port, came to Slingsby, who spoke Italian, 
and all urged that it was necessary to dissemble, and by 
no means to admit that we had put in there. When he 
answered that he would not lie, they abused and threatened 
him, hinting broadly that we should suffer if by us they 
were so inconvenienced. But he answered unmoved that 
he would rather endure everything than offend his God in 
the least thing ; then, turning to me, he said that we should 
commit the whole affair to God, through the intercession 
of St. Catharine of Genoa, whose body we intended to 
visit. We had hardly ended our prayer, when leave arriv- 
ed from the magistrate for us all to land without any such 
previous examination as was at first pretended. 

* See letter of Francis, and his brother later. 



hi the Reign of Charles I. 24.J 

" When we were about to sail from Genoa to Leghorn, a 
certain religious of the Order of St. Francis wished to 
come, but had not money to pay the captain ; but Francis 
charitably paid for him." 

The two friends arrived in Rome apparently on the first 
day of 1639. On his arrival in Rome, his friend and pro- 
tector, Cardinal Barberini, offered Francis a place in his 
house, but he requested to be allowed to enter a college, 
" proposing to the father-general that he should enter the 
Irish College, but in this, as in all things, submitting him- 
self to the will of the general." (Letter of his confessor, 
Father Malone, who also accompanied him to Rome.) It 
was decided, however, that he was to enter the English 
College, of which the cardinal was the protector. The car- 
dinal proposed that he should have a separate room and a 
servant, and that he, as protector of the college, would 
give him a dispensation to have them. But the modest 
youth refused, and begged the father-rector not to give 
him any indulgence above the others in food or dress. In 
college he was a most diligent observer of the rules, and 
never omitted to ask leave of the prefect or vice-prefect 
when he left his room, (although others did not do so,) be- 
cause such was the ancient rule. It would appear from 
the document already referred to that he entered the Eng- 
lish College about the middle of February, 1639, an d there 
studied philosophy (and, we may presume, theology also) 
for two years. 

He was no sooner settled in Rome than he reverted to 
his intention of resigning his inheritance to his younger 
brother, and obtaining funds for a college in Belgium. 
How this was arranged the two following letters will ex- 
plain : the first is from Father Francis to his brother, and 
is dated Rome, 24th April, 1639: 

" My most deare Brother : I doe hereby renounce 
myne inheritance, and doe yield unto you, my most deare 



248 Martyrs and Confessors 

brother, all ye rights that God hath given me unto my 
father and mother's estate, and doe utterly disenable my- 
self of pretending anything thereunto, that those condi- 
tions be observed." 

He retained a portion of land, value ^iooa year, to en- 
dow a college. 

His brother answered from " Kilkenny, this St. Joseph's, 
(19th March,) 1640. When I become master of my father's 
estate, I will bestow ^iooa year of it in erecting an Irish 
seminary ; nay, more, if God shall call you away before it 
shall come to my hands, I bind myself to make it good to 
the society for that intent. I now, with like willingness, 
binde myself to give you ,£25 per annum for yourself, to 
be paid to you wherever you shall demande it. — H. Slings- 
by." 

About this same date he wrote the following letter to his 
father ; it is a copy in his own hand, but not dated : 

" Most honored and dear Father : Being now, by 
the assistance of my good God, arrived at the place where 
he showed so great mercy unto me as to make me a mem- 
ber of the Holy Catholic Church, which of all places ought 
to be most dear unto me, and best deserves the name of 
my country, wherein I was born unto Christ, I am resolved 
here to spend some years in the service of God, and pro- 
secution of my studies. And since, the considering your 
age, my intended stay in these parts, and the dangers in so 
long a voyage when I return, it is most possible I shall 
never see you more, the love and duty I owe you induce 
me now to bid you farewell. And first of all I most hum- 
bly crave your pardon, if at any time, in the heat of dis- 
course about matters of religion, I have forgot the duty I 
owe unto a father by being more earnest and vehement 
than modesty allows. Yet have I this consolation, that my 
intentions were pure, and that I sought you and not yours, 
for he that shall be my Judge is also my witness that if I 



In the Reign of Charles I. 249 

had in my possession all your estate, wherein God and na- 
ture give me a right, I would most willingly leave both it 
and my own life too, so that your soul, so dear unto me, 
might enjoy the happiness for which it was created. My 
dear father, it is not in your power to hinder my love ; all 
the persecutions you can raise against me, all the afflic- 
tiDns and wants you can make me suffer, nay, your refus- 
ing to love me, (which to me is more than all the rest,) are 
not able to blot out my love toward you. For when I con- 
sider how good a father you ever have been, how careful of 
my education, how tender in your affection, bow liberal 
toward me for my expenses, these former benefits do pre- 
vail ; and if I put them in the balance with your latter un- 
kindnesses, yet in my own judgment they weigh down to 
the ground, especially since the troubles you make me un- 
dergo proceed not originally from any evil will, but from a 
deceived judgment. Now that you may see how good a 
Master I serve, I will declare unto you how the prudence 
of God hath so disposed things that I was never brought 
to extreme necessity, though I was indeed constrained to 
sell some clothes and books ; for, first, I had when I was 
first in Rome lent unto an English gentleman eighty 
pounds sterling, which I could never get paid till my last 
being in England, so that it seemed God had laid it up in 
store till I should stand in need thereof ; for our diet, we 
had it for. the most part gratis at my Lord Falkland's. 
When I came into France, my Lord of Castlehaven main- 
tained me in all things gratis for the space of a year, where- 
in he made no difference betwixt himself and me, desiring 
me to use his purse as my own ; and when I came away 
into Italy, leaving him in France, he lent me fifty pounds 
for my expenses by the way, which only I desire you to 
repay. When I came into Italy, Cardinal Barberini, hear- 
ing thereof, had given orders, before my arrival at Rome, 
that lodgings should be provided for me in his palace, but 



250 Martyrs and Confessors 

when I came to kiss his hands I told his eminence that, 
if it pleased him, I would rather follow my studies in the 
English College, which he willingly assented unto, giving 
present order for my maintenance, and offered me the pri- 
vilege of keeping a servant, which I refused. Thus I may 
truly say, ■ Pater meus et amici mei dereliquerunt me, sed 
Dominus suscepit me.' His goodness hath a care of me, 
and suffers nothing to be wanting unto me ; one thing 
alone I except, that we two are not one. Yet while I 
have a tongue to speak I will never cease to beg and say, 
' Lord, if thou wilt thou canst grant me what my soul so 
much thirsteth after.' O my father! give me a blessing; 
you know what my heart would say. Sapienti pauca. My 
brother hath refused certain maintenance here that hath 
been offered him by the cardinal, out of the desire he hath 
to return to you, and chooseth rather to hazard the suffer- 
ing of want in your presence than to want nothing being 
absent from you. Receive him, therefore, I most humbly 
beseech you ; despise not your own bowels, since in all 
things, (yourself being judge,) except in matters of religion, 
he hath been a dutiful and loving son unto you. And as 
you tender the favor of him of whose favor we shall one 
day stand so much in need, reject not my mother, since 
he commands you to receive her, and assures you by his 
own mouth that unless you forgive you cannot be for- 
given." 

The rest of his brief career may be given in the words 
of another Jesuit father : 

" During the space of nearly two years that he studied 
philosophy in the English College, he was an example of all 
virtues to the other alumni. He was ordered for his health's 
sake during the summer of the year 1640 and 1 641 to Tibur, 
and stopped in a certain villa at Tusculum, among our 
students, where he always conducted himself as one of 
them, and showed an example of humility by always wash- 



In the Reign of Charles I. 251 

ing and cleaning the plates in the kitchen. At the end of 
winter he was desired to prepare himself to receive holy 
orders, and thus fit himself for entering into religion, which 
he had sighed after as another promised land for more than 
seven years. This he did with great fervor, and in the 
month of July, 1641, he was made priest, and ever re- 
cited the divine office and said Mass with the greatest 
attention and reverence. He chose the feast of the bless- 
ed Francis Borgia for his entrance into the novitiate ; 
and on the eve — that is, on the 30th September, 1641 — he 
was accompanied, as is the custom, by the alumni of his 
college to the novitiate of St. Andrea on the Quirinal, and 
there took on his body the religious habit which he had 
long worn in his heart." 

He died at Naples, but when, I have not been able to 
discover ; probably before he had completed his novice- 
ship. Father Spreul says : " It chanced that I was the 
first to bring the bitter tidings of his death, struck by an 
unforeseen chance, to the master of novices, Father Oliva. 
He was struck with grief, and said that there was one dead 
from whom he had learned more of virtue than he had ever 
taught. He called together all his fellow-novices into the 
school, and, having spoken of the shortness and uncertain- 
ty of life, he told them of the death of Father Francis, and 
desired them to say the rosaries said in the society for a de- 
ceased brother, not that he might be freed from the flames 
of purgatory, for he did not think he needed these suffrages, 
but to return thanks to God that he had vouchsafed them 
so excellent an example of holiness and exact observance 
of the rule. He exhorted them all to keep such an exam- 
ple of virtue ever before their eyes ; that they could all 
bear witness, as he could, that Father Francis had been so 
perfect in religious observance that he ventured to say he 
had never broken even the least of the rules." 



252 Martyrs and Co7ifessors 

Anno 1637. 

MOST REV. HUGH O'REILLY, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 

" This venerable prelate, who in 1628 was transferred 
from the see of Kilmore to that of Armagh, was in 1637, 
for having dared to assemble the clergy of his province in 
synod, thrown into prison in Dublin Castle, where for six 
weeks he was detained in a painful captivity. We learn 
these particulars from a letter by the archbishop himself, 
addressed to Dr. Dwyer, in Rome, on 24th October, 1637, 
in which he further states that as yet his health had hard- 
ly recovered from the severe shock it received in the damp 
dungeon of the castle." — Moran, Archbishops of Dublin, 
vol. i. p. 402. 

For a full account of the great deeds of this noble bish- 
op, and how he died a fugitive on Trinity Island in Lough 
Erne, .and was buried in the Abbey of Cavan, founded by 
Gelasius O'Reilly, I must refer my readers to Dr. Rene- 
han's Collections. 



REV. JOHN O'MANNIN, O.P.P. 

" The venerable John O'Mannin, of the convent of Deny. 
a most strict observer of the rule, always wore the habit of 
his order, and being recognized on a time by the heretics, 
he was by them taken prisoner and dragged before the tri- 
bunal. Here he despised alike the rewards which were 
offered to him and the torments with which he was threat- 
ened, and ever loudly professed the Catholic faith. He 
was ordered for several weeks to be tortured two or three 
times a week on the rack, and once when he was hanging 
in that torture he was let fall and his back broken, so that 
to his dying day he remained hump-backed, showing 
clearly he lacked not the will but the chance to be a mar- 
tyr." — Ex Act. Cap. Gen. Romce, 1656, ap. Mon. Dorn. 



In the Reign of Charles I. 253 

Anno 1640. 

REV. RAYMOND KEOGH, O.P.P. 

"This year the Rev. Father Raymond Keogh, being 
taken prisoner by the heretics, through hatred of the Ca- 
tholic faith and the authority of the Roman pontiff, which 
he preached, was by them beheaded." — Ex Relat. ad Sac. 
Cojig. dat. ap. Mo?z. Dom. 

— ♦ — 

Anno 1641. 

Although it is foreign to the purpose of this book to 
enter into the general history of Ireland, or even of the 
persecutions, my intention being only to give a brief ac- 
count of the separate sufferings of those martyrs and con- 
fessors whose names have been preserved, yet it appears 
desirable, before entering on a new and different era of per- 
secution, briefly to call attention to its features. From the 
change of religion under Elizabeth to the commencement 
of the wars of the Long Parliament the persecution had 
been more or less intermittent, and a distinction might, 
with some show of reason, be drawn between the wars in 
which the Irish were engaged in defence of their indepen- 
dence against Elizabeth and purely religious wars, although 
in truth all through these wars hatred and love of the Ca- 
tholic religion were the mainsprings of action. But with 
1648 began a new era. The Parliament of England de- 
clared war against the king, and Ireland was pressed by 
the two belligerents. The Catholics took up arms in their 
own defence, and declared for the king. At one time they 
were encouraged by him ; at another, when pressed by the 
Parliament and the Scotch, he disavowed them. One party 
was always, and under all circumstances, inimical to the 
Catholic Irish — the party of the Parliamentarian Puritans. 
For eight years these bloody wars went on, accompanied 



254 Martyrs and Confessors 

by most sanguinary persecutions of the Catholics, til] 
Charles I.'s execution, on the 30th January, 1649. I n 
August of that same year Cromwell landed in Ireland. 
For a sketch of the bloody persecution, or rather universal 
massacre, which followed, I must refer my readers to the 
work of Dr. Moran, Persecution of the Irish Catholics ; but 
it will be necessary for them to remember these dates, in 
order to understand the lives of the few victims whose 
names have been preserved. It will give my readers some 
idea of the way in which the persecution was carried on, 
to mention that Lord Clarendon says : " The Parliament 
party had grounded their own authority and strength upon 
such foundations as were inconsistent with any toleration 
of the Roman Catholic religion, and even with any hu- 
manity to the Irish nation — and more especially to those 
of the old native extraction, the whole race whereof they 
had upon the matter sworn to extirpate." (Hist. i. 215.) 
The Parliament of England, under their guidance, resolved, 
on the 24th of October, 1644, "that no quarter shall be 
given to any Irishman, or to any papist born in Ireland ;" 
and their historian, Borlase, adds : "The orders of Parlia- 
ment were excellently well executed." (Hist, of Rebellion, 
p. 62.) Leland and Warner refer to the letters of the lords- 
justices for the fact that the soldiers " slew all persons 
promiscuously, not sparing even the women." Cromwell 
declared on landing in Dublin that no mercy should be 
shown to the Irish, and that they should be dealt with as 
the Canaanites in Joshua's time. It is impossible to esti- 
mate the number of Catholics slain in the ten years from 
1642 to 1652. Three bishops and more than 300 priests 
were put .to death for the faith. Thousands of men, women, 
and children were sold as slaves for the West Indies ; Sir 
W. Petty mentions that six thousand boys and women 
were thus sold. (Political Anatomy of Ireland, p. 187.) 
A letter written in 1656, quoted by Lingard, puts the 



In the Reign of Charles /. 255 

number at 60,000 ; as late as 1666 there were 12,000 Irish 
slaves scattered among the West Indian Islands. (Let- 
ter of Rev. J. Grace, written in 1669, ap. Moran; p. 147.) 
40,000 Irish Catholics fled to the Continent, and 20,000 
took refuge in the Hebrides and other Scottish islands. 
(Moran, p. 99.) In a word, as Sir W. Petty writes, the 
population of Ireland in 1641 was 1,466,000, of whom Ca- 
tholics were about 1,240,000; in 1659, the whole population 
was only 500,091, of whom Irish were only 420,000, so that 
very nearly or quite one million must have perished. (Sir 
W. Petty, Polit. Anat. p. 13, ap. Moran, and Hardinge's 
Census of 1659.) 

One other remark is necessary before entering on the 
separate lives : Up to 1640, the Irish had days and even 
years of comparative safety, during which they could col- 
lect and communicate information, and several writers col- 
lected and published accounts of the lives and deaths of 
those who suffered for the faith ; but so universal was the 
desolation, so almost entire the extinction of the Irish Ca- 
tholics, in the Cromwellian persecution, that no such col- 
lections- could be made, and hence we have only scatter- 
ed notices of a comparatively few cases, and no such col- 
lected accounts as Dr. Roothe's De Frocessu Martyriali, 
published in 1619, and similar works. The few records 
that remain have almost all been collected by Dr. Moran 
in his work, and to him I am indebted for a great part of 
the following pages. 

TWENTY CAPUCHIN FATHERS. 

"Before the close of 1641, a proclamation was pub- 
lished interdicting the exercise of the Catholic religion ; a 
rigorous search was made to discover the priests and reli- 
gious, and no fewer than forty of them being arrested, they 
were for some time treated with great rigor in prison, and 



256 Martyrs and Confessors 

then transported to the Continent. An extract from a let 
ter addressed to his superior in Rome, on the 12th July, 
1642, by a Capuchin father who was sent into exile, will 
convey some idea of the storm thus let loose against the 
Catholics. 

" ' Whithersoever the enemy penetrates, everything is 
destroyed by fire and sword ; none are spared, not even 
the infant at its mother's breast, for their desire is to 
wholly extirpate the Irish race. In Dublin our order, as 
also the other religious bodies, had a residence, and a beauti- 
fully ornamented chapel, in which we publicly, and in our 
habit, performed the sacred ceremonies ; but no sooner, 
had the soldiers arrived from England than they furiously 
rushed everywhere, profaned our chapels, overturned our 
altars, broke to pieces the sacred images, trampling them 
underfoot and destroying them by fire ; our residences 
were plundered, the priests were everywhere sought for, 
and many, among whom myself and companion, were 
captured and cast into prison. 

" ' We were twenty in number, and the lords-justices at 
first resolved on our execution, but through the influence 
of some members of the council we were transported to 
France. The masters of the two vessels into which we 
were cast received private instructions to throw us into 
the sea, but they refused to commit this horrid crime. 
Oh ! would to God that we had been worthy to be led to 
the scaffold or thus drowned for the faith.' " — Moran, 
Persec. p. 1 1, and letter of Father Nicholas, Superior of 
the Capuchins of Dublin, from Poitiers 12th July, 1642, 
quoted by him. 

REV. PETER HIGGINS, O.P.P., 
" An alumnus of the Dublin convent, at the commence- 
ment of the war was taken prisoner by the heretics, and 
although not accused of any crime, but, on the contrary, 



In the Reig7i of Charles I. 257 

many of the heretics proclaimed his innocence, yet was he 
condemned to death ; and having thrice confessed to his 
prior and received absolution from him — for he made his 
way into the prison in disguise — publicly professing his in- 
nocence and his firm adherence to the Catholic faith and 
our holy order, he was hung in the public place of Dublin, 
on the 23d of March, 1641. His constancy under torment, 
and the joy expressed in his countenance, moved many of 
the heretics to tears ; but, on the other hand, rather excited 
the fury of others, who vented their rage on his body by all 
sorts of insults, and refusing to allow it to be buried in 
the city ; and as it was carried out of the gate, one broke 
the skull with a bullet from a gun, and inflicted divers 
other like injuries." — Hib. Dcm. p. 561, ex Actis Capitiili 
Generalis Romce, 1644. 



VERY REV. PETER O'HIGGINS, O.P.P. 

"This same year the Rev. Father Peter O'Higgins, 
Prior of Naas, obtained the palm of constancy in Dublin. 
(Hib. Dom.) This pious and eloquent man was arrested 
and brought before the lords-justices, (Parsons and Bor- 
lase,) charged with dogmatizing, or, in other words, seduc- 
ing the Protestants from their religion. Now, when they 
failed to sustain any capital charge against him, they sent 
to inform him that, if he abandoned his faith, he might ex- 
pect many and great privileges, but all depended on his 
embracing the English faith. That they were resolved to 
sacrifice him he knew right well ; so that on the very 
morning of his execution the messenger came to his prison 
with the terms proposed by the justices. O'Higgins, in 
reply, said : ' Alas ! I am not so weary of life as to wish 
for speedy dissolution ; but if your masters are so anxious 
to preserve me, return and ask them to forward in their 



258 Martyrs and Confessors 

own handwriting an instrument leaving life and death to 
my own option ; so that if I shall have renounced the Ro- 
man Catholic religion in presence of the gibbet, the terri- 
ble circumstance in which I have been placed may extenu- 
ate the guilt attaching to what is deemed apostasy.' The 
justices, thinking he was shaken in his mind, ordered the 
conditional pardon to be handed to him on the first step 
of the ladder, and it was so handed to him by the execu- 
tioner. He bowed courteously on receiving it, and loud 
was the exultation of the heretic mob, who thought they 
w r ere about to catch ' a convert.' Now, when he stood ex- 
posed to the view of God and man, he exhibited to all 
around the instrument which he held, and, commenting on 
it with warmth, convicted his impious judges of their own 
avowed iniquity. Knowing well that there were Catholics 
in the crowd, he addressed them in such words as these : 

"'Dear brethren, children of the Holy Roman Church, 
since the day I fell into the cruel hands of the heretics who 
stand around me, I have endured much hunger, great insults, 
dark and fcetid dungeons ; and the doubt as to what was the 
cause seemed to me to render the palm of martyrdom doubt- 
ful ; for it is the cause, not the death, that makes the martyr. 
But the omnipotent God, the protector of my innocence, 
and who ordereth all things sweetly, has so arranged that 
although I have been accused as a seducer and a criminal 
by the laws of the land, yet to-day in me it is the Catholic 
religion only that is condemned to death. Behold here an 
undoubted witness of my innocence — a pardon signed by the 
king's representatives, offering me not only life, but large 
gifts, if even now I renounce the Catholic religion. But I 
call God and men to witness how freely I reject this — how 
gladly I now embrace my doom in and for the profession of 
that faith.' Having thus spoken and thrown the pardon to 
a friend in the crowd, he desired the executioner to do his 
office. When his body was hanging, and the executioner 



In the Reign of Charles I. 259 

pulled at it several times, yet heaving a loud sigh, he uttered 
1 Deo gratias,' and so, having disappointed the expectation of 
the heretics, he went to his God." — Dom. a Ros. } Father 
Meehans translation, p. 199.* 

For an account of the wholesale massacres of Irish and 
even English and Scotch Catholics in Ireland, on account 
of their religion, I must refer my readers to Curry's Civil 



* Borlase, the Protestant historian, gives the following account of his arrest: "In this 
expedition to the county of Kildare the soldiers found a priest, one Mr. Higgins, at Naas, who 
might, if he pleased, have easily fled if he apprehended any danger in the stay. When he 
was brought before the Earl of Ormond, he voluntarily confessed that he was a papist, and that his 
residence was in the town, from whence he refused to fly away with those that were guilty, 1 
because he not only knew himself very innocent, but believed that he could not be without 
ample testimony of it, having, by his sole charity and power, preserved many of the English 
from the rage and fury of the Irish ; and, therefore, he only besought his lordship to preserve 
him from the fury and violence of the soldiers, and put him securely into Dublin; though 
with so much hazard that, when it was spread abroad among the soldiers that he was a papist, 
the officer in whose custody he was entrusted was assaulted by them, and it was as much as 
the earl could do to compose the meeting. When his lordship came to Dublin, he informed 
he lords-justices of the prisoner he had brought with him, and of the good testimony he 
had received of his peaceable carriage, and of the pains he had taken to restrain those with 
whom he hacr'credit from entering into rebellion, and of many charitable offices he had per- 
formed, of all which there wanted not evidence enough, there being many then in Dublin 
who owed their lives, and whatever of their fortunes was left, purely to him. Within a few 
days after, when the earl did not suspect the poor man being in danger, he heard that Sir 
Charles Coote, who was provost-marshal-general, had taken him out of prison, and caused him 
to be put to death in the morning, before or as soon as it was light ; of which barbarity the earl 
complained to the lords-justices, but was so far from bringing the other to be questioned 
that he found himself upon some disadvantage for thinking the proceeding to be other than it 
ought to have been." — Borlase, ap. Curry, p. 211. 

"That this Father Peter O'Higgins is another person from the Father Peter Higgins 
mentioned before is quite clear. First, because his martyrdom is mentioned in the Acts of the 
General Chapter of '1656, under the title 'Appendix of some remarkable men of this province, 
(Ireland,) whose memory was omitted to be recorded in the acts of former chapters ;' but the 
memory of the former was not forgotten to be recorded in the acts of former chapters, but is 
recorded in the acts of the preceding chapter, that of 1644. Also because the latter is called 
in the Acts of the CJiapter of 1656 Prior of Naas, and is therefore called reverend father ; the 
former is called in the Acts of 1644 simply father, for he was not prior, (not in office,) and is 
said to have confessed to his prior, and indeed all the details are different. Nor is the 
identity both of name and surname, and the place of their suffering, any objection. For only 
to cite, for brevity's sake, a few instances : I knew at Rome, in the convent of St. Sixtus, 
two of our fathers whose names were Michael MacDonogh, one a professor of theology, and 
raised at that very time to the bishopric of Kilmore, the other a student of theology. Lately 
there were two Thomas de Burgos, both alumni of the convent of Athenry, both of whom 
were presented for their degree in theology, and one of whom lately perished in the earthquake 
at Lisbon, not to speak of the third Thomas de Burgo who writes this. At this moment there 
are in this metropolis of Dublin four priests of the name of Peter Talbot, two secular and two 



1 Guilty, that is, of the rising of 1641. 



26o Martyrs and Confessors 

Wars, Appendix, p. 623, where he gives an abridgment 
of the Collection of some of the Massacres and Murders 
committed on the Irish in Ireland since the 23d of October, 
1 64 1, printed at London, 1662. 



Anno 1642. 

REV. FATHER HENRY CAGHWELL, S.J., AND OTHERS. 

The reader has seen, under date of the preceding year, 
an account of the sufferings of the Capuchin fathers in 
Dublin. Very similar was the fate of the Jesuits in the 
same place. A narrative preserved in the Irish College, 
Rome, and given by Dr. Moran, thus briefly narrates 
them : " We were persecuted and dispersed, and despoiled 
of all our goods ; some, too, were cast into prison, and 
others were sent into exile. Among the fathers of the 
society was Father Henry Caghwell, renowned for his zeal 
and learning. Being confined to his bed by sickness, he 
was apprehended by the soldiers, and hurried to the pub- 
lic square. As he was unable to walk, or even to stand, 
he was placed on a chair, more for mockery than ease, and 
subjected to the cruel insults of the soldiery ; he was then 
beaten with cudgels and thrown into the ship with the 
others for France." — Missio Soc. Jesu usque ad an. 1655, 
in Archiv. Colleg. Hib. Romce, ap. Moran. 

A manuscript in the Burgundian Library at Brussels 
fixes the date of this event in 1643. It says : "To omit 
many others, his master, (Slingsby's,) Father Henry Cagh- 

regular, of the Order of Hermits of St. Augustine. It is also to be remarked that the latter 
Peter is called O'Higgins ; the first, Higgins, without the letter O, because in Dublin, an 
almost English city, many Irish names lose the prefix O, or Mac, which is commonly added 
in the country." — Hib. Dom. p. 562. 

I have given the whole of this note because my readers will constantly meet with this iden- 
tity of names, and, as little is known of many martyrs save the date of their death, might 
think that some were identical. 



In the Reign of Charles I 261 

well, under whom he learned a part of his philosophy, in 
the course of last year (1642) gave to the citizens of Dub- 
lin a noble example of patience for the faith, for, being drag- 
ged from the house where he lay a paralytic, he was scourg- 
ed in the public square, and left lying there in the sight of 
his friends, who dearly loved him, but did not dare to raise 
him up ; then he was cast into prison, and at length 
thrown, with twenty other priests, into a ship, which landed 
him just alive in France." — MS. No. 3824, Correspondance 
des Peres Jesuites Irlandais. 

We learn from Oliver that he was landed at Rochelle, 
where the Rector of the Jesuits' College paid him every 
charitable attention, and by great care and the best medi- 
cal advice gradually succeeded in restoring him to a state 
of convalescence. As soon as he could, the reverend fa- 
ther hastened back to the scene of his former labors, but 
within a few days after his return, early in 1643, fell a vic- 
tim to his zeal and charity. F. G. Dillon says, in a letter 
of Aug. 3, 1643, that he had encountered a storm on his 
passage back which lasted twenty-one days. Sic vents 
Chris ti confessor obiit. — Oliver. 



REV. FATHER FERGAL WARD, O.S.F., AND CORNELIUS 

O'BRIEN. 

" Father Fergal Ward was a native of Ulster, and a 
member of the order of the strict observance of St. Francis. 
He was renowned for his eloquence, and for his zeal in the 
exercise of the sacred ministry. In 1642, he was seized on 
by a cruel and barbarous pirate, a Scotchman, named 
Forbes, who kept six vessels in the service of the Puritans, 
and chiefly infested the banks of the Shannon. In the 
third month after his arrest he was hanged from the mast- 
head, in odium fidei, in the very centre of the Shannon, 



262 Martyrs and Confessors 

where the pirate then lay in wait for some prey, about the 
end of October, 1642." — Bruodin, lib. iv. cap. xiv. 

This is quite a different Father Ward from the one slain 
in Armagh in 1577, the only similarity being that of the 
name, and that they were both Ulster men. 

"Cornelius O'Brien, the Lord of Carrigh, in the county 
Kerry, a man of great hope to his family and his country, 
was arrested by the piratical band of the same Forbes, in 
the castle of Glanens, which was situated on the banks of 
the Shannon, and was the property of John Geraldine. 
Being conducted to their vessels, threats and promises 
were alike employed in vain to induce him to abandon the 
Catholic faith. He was therefore led out to execution, and 
on the same day with Father Ward, and by a similar death, 
attained the martyr's crown. Both were hanged at the 
same time, one at each extremity of the yard, and subse- 
quently, at full tide, the ropes being cut, their bodies were 
cast into the river." — Ibid. 



REV. FATHER JAMES LATIN, S.J. 

Dr. Oliver says : 

" All that I can gather concerning this zealous father is 
from two letters, one dated Waterford, October 10, 1642 ; 
the other from Galway, August 3, 1643. The first informs 
me that though many priests and religious had been seized 
and executed by the Puritans, yet Father James Latin and 
two of his brethren braved every danger, and were indefa- 
tigable in assisting and consoling the Catholics groaning 
under Puritanical despotism. In the postscript the writer 
says he had just received intelligence of Father Latin's ap- 
prehension and commitment to jail. The second letter 
states that he was still a prisoner, and that he had been 



In the Reign of Charles I. 263 

apprehended in the street in the act of proceeding to ad- 
minister the sacraments to the sick." 

As there is no notice of his having ever reached France, 
it is easy to conjecture his fate. 



REV. EDMUND HORE AND JOHN CLANCY. 

In the Barberini archives in Rome is preserved a letter, 
written, on the 9th March, 1642, by the venerable Bishop 
of Waterford to an Irish gentleman resident in Paris. In 
it he says : 

" Last week the President of Ulster, having received re- 
enforcements, once more took the field, together with the 
Earl of Cork, the Earl of Barrymore, Lord Broghill, and 
Sir John Browne. Marching to Dungarvan, and seizing on 
the castle, they set fire to the town, and put to death 
Father Edmund Hore and Father John Clancy, both 
priests, together with others of the principal citizens ; 
they then sacked the place, and retired, leaving a strong 
garrison in the castle." — MS. ap. Moran, Persecut. p. 55. 



REV. FRANCIS O'MAHONY, O.S.F. 

" Francis O'Mahony, or Matthews, was a native of 
Cork, and a shining light in the Order of Saint Francis. 
Having completed his studies in Spain and Belgium, he 
returned to his country in the reign of King James, and did 
much for the glory of God and the increase of the Francis- 
can order. In more advanced age he was provincial minis- 
ter of Ireland, and twice general visitor, and finally guardi- 
an of the college of St. Antony at Louvain, of which he 
was an alumnus. In the year 1642, he was guardian of the 
convent of Cork, and was taken prisoner by the heretical 
governor of the city, and thrown into prison. A few days 



264 Martyrs and Confessors 

afterward he was brought up for examination, when he con- 
fessed he was a Franciscan, but denied that he had sought, 
as was alleged, to betray the city to the Catholics. His 
constancy in the faith was tried by many torments, especi- 
ally the following : the executioners wrapped the old 
priest's ten fingers in tow and pitch, and then tied them 
together with candles of pitch, and then set fire to them, 
so that all his ten fingers burnt together. (I was at this 
time in the country.) While his fingers were thus burning, 
Father Francis exhorted the Catholics who stood around 
to constancy in the faith, and the heretics to be converted. 
A certain preacher, wondering at the patience of the bless- 
ed martyr, asked him whether he felt pain. ' Touch my 
fingers with one of yours,' answered Father Francis, ' and 
you may judge.' When all his fingers were burnt down to 
the last joints, he was ordered to be executed. The man 
of God gave thanks to God, and went to the place of exe- 
cution as to a feast ; and, having exhorted the people, joy- 
fully mounted the ladder, and, fitting the rope round his 
neck, having made all necessary dispositions for dying well, 
he desired the executioner to do his office. He was then 
pushed off the ladder, and so hung from eleven in the fore- 
noon until five in the afternoon. 

" Father Francis had in the city, besides one sister, two 
nephews and four grand-nephews, and as many friends as 
there were Catholics. Some of them, who were men of in- 
fluence, went to the governor and asked that they might 
take down the body of the father, and bury it after the 
manner of the Catholics. The governor granted their re- 
quest, and they carried the body to the house of his sister, 
and, having there laid it on a table, dressed in his habit, 
and placed lighted candles round it, devoutly venerated the 
deceased martyr of Christ 

"About the second hour of the night, while the Catho- 
lics who crowded the house were devoutly praying, Father 



In the Reign of Charles I. 265 

Francis began to move, and, looking on his sister and the 
persons who stood around, desired them not to be afraid, 
but to lift him off the table. His friends soon crowded 
around him, and, removing the candles, perceived that 
Father Francis was really alive and well, and began to 
congratulate themselves and him that he had escaped the 
executioner. ■ Not so, my dear friends,' said Father Fran- 
cis ; ' my soul, which had left my body, returns by the will 
of God, who desires the salvation of all in error ; call there- 
fore to me the governor of the city, that once more I may 
preach to him the words of salvation.' All the Catholics 
who were present besought him with tears to abstain from 
useless preaching, and, as the heretics held him for dead, 
to hide himself in some safe place for their spiritual good. 
* It is the will of God,' he answered, ' which Christians 
must not oppose, that I should announce the words of life 
to the heretics ; call, therefore, the governor and the leaders 
of the soldiers, or I will myself go to them.' 

" The Catholics, compelled by his commands, sent to the 
governor to inform him that Father Francis was alive 
and well. Astonished at the news, the governor hastened 
with his principal officers and a strong guard of soldiers to 
the house where Father Francis lay. The moment the 
father saw the Puritans — who were rebels alike to their 
God and their king — he rose to his feet, and with his usual 
zeal told how their merciful God desired their salvation, 
and earnestly besought them to abandon heresy and return 
to the bosom of their mother the church. The governor, 
hardened in evil, the more raged at this exhortation, and 
ordered the papist — who, as he said, must have preserved 
his life by magic — to be immediately hung with his own 
girdle. Some of the soldiers immediately turned execu- 
tioners, for even the Puritan officers, not to speak of the 
soldiers, considered it no disgrace to hang a papist with 
their own hands, especially if he were a priest. They im- 



266 Martyrs and Confessors 

mediately fastened his Franciscan girdle round his neck 
and tied him up to the beam which supported the ceiling 
of the room, and, having broken his neck, left him 
hanging there all night under a guard of Puritan sol- 
diers. 

" There are still living a hundred men who were then at 
Cork, and are witnesses of what I write. The name of the 
governor has escaped me, or I would record it for his last- 
ing ignominy. On the next day the body of the deceased 
was reverently taken down by the Catholics and buried in 
the church of the Friars Minors, anno 1642."* — Bruodin, 
lib. iv. cap. xv. 



REV. FATHER RAYMUND KEOGH, BROTHER RAYMUND 

KEOGH, REVEREND FATHER STEPHEN PETTIT, AND 

BROTHER CORMAC EGAN, O.P.P. 

" In the following year, (1642,) Father Raymund Keogh, 
of the convent of Roscommon, was seized by the heretics, 
and, being slain for the faith, found in death eternal life." 
— Capit. Gen. Romce, 1656. 

" In the year 1642, Father Stephen Pettit, sub-prior of the 
convent of Mullingar, while hearing the confession of a 
soldier in a fight near Ballynacurry, was recognized to be a 
priest by a neighboring advanced post of heretical soldiers, 

* Bruodin evidently considered the revival of Father Francis miraculous, but it was not ne- 
cessarily so. Many extraordinary cases of suspended animation from hanging, when, as in 
those times, from the execution not being carried out with a violent fall, the neck was not 
broken, are recorded. Among the papers left by a distinguished surgeon who lived in Dublin 
at the close of the last century was an account of the case of a young man who, in 1798, was 
hanged for several hours, and whose apparently lifeless body was brought by his friends, after 
dark, to the surgeon's house. The latter succeeded in restoring animation : the young man re- 
mained concealed in the surgeon's house for some days, and lived long afterward. An illustra- 
tion of another part of Bruodin's account may be drawn from the same period of 1798. A well- 
known major of yeomanry, of very tall stature, was known by the sobriquet of the walking 
gallows, because rebels had been hung over his shoulder. The more ordinary mode was 
to tie the condemned to the end of the shaft of a cart and then tilt the cart, so lifting him up 
from the ground. In this mode of execution the neck was not broken, and so life might linger 
a long time. 



In the Reign of Charles I. 267 

who aimed at him, and, being hit by a bullet, he received the 
sacraments of the church, and died the next day." — Capit. 
Gen. Romce, 1644, and Dom. a Rosario, p. 360, (216.) 

" Brother Raymund Keogh was slain by the heretics in 
hatred of the faith." — Capit. Gen. Rome?, 1644. 

" Brother Cormac Egan was hung by the heretics about 
the year 1642." — Ap. Gen. Romce, 1644. 

All these are from Hibernica Dominicana, p. 562, where 
De Burgo gives reasons to show the two Keoghs are dif- 
ferent, one being a priest, the other a simple monk. 

— ♦. — 
MRS. ALISON READ. 

" The soldiery, rushing into the defenceless town of Dun- 
shaughlin, seized on fifty old men, women, and little boys, 
and mercilessly slew them with their swords and spears. 
Mrs. Read, then in her eightieth year, encouraged these 
sufferers to endure every torment with constancy for the 
faith. Fired with rage at her exhortations, the Puritan 
soldiers, after inflicting many wounds, set her up as a target 
for their guns ; and thus she happily expired. The son of 
this venerable martyr has preserved to us her memory, and 
in his commentary on the Book of Maccabees mentions her 
heroic death to illustrate the fortitude and holy sentiments 
of the mother of the seven Maccabees, the true model of 
female heroism." — Moran, Persecut. p. 198. 



Anno 1643. 

■ REV. CORNELIUS O'CONOR AND EUGENE DALY, 
TRINITARIANS. 

These two fathers studied in Spain, and were sent into 
Ireland by their superiors. They made their way there in 
an English vessel, and spent there some time ; and Lopez 



268 



Martyrs and Confessors 



mentions that Father Cornelius had some disputes with 
heretics about recovering the convent of Adare.* They 
returned to Spain to make arrangements for a college of 
their order in Seville or elsewhere, and, having arranged for 
the reception of Irish youths in the convents and colleges 
of Aragon, Castile, and Andalusia, embarked for Ireland, 
but their ship fell into the hands of a cruel heretical pirate 
named John Plunket, by whom they were thrown into the 
sea, either in 1643 or 1644. — (Lopez, p. 62, who gives as 
his authority an original letter of Father Christopher 
Burgatt, of the convent of Kilmallock, written in Spain in 
1648, and some other contemporary authorities.) 



Anno 1644. -\ 



REV. CHRISTOPHER ULTAN, (OR DONLEVINS,) O.S.F. 



" This father, of the Order of St. Francis, after complet- 
ing his studies in Spain, for many years preached with 
great fervor the sacred truths of the Gospel in the pro- 
vince of Ulster. He was concealed with Father Ward (see 



* It is curious, as illustrating the way in which the Catholics from time to time restored, at 
least partially, the possession of the convents to the religious, that although the Trinitarian 
convent of Adare was suppressed in the reign of Henry VIII., in a survey of the manor ot 
Adare, dated 6th November, 1559, (2d Elizabeth,) it is said: "There standeth an abbey of 
Friars of the Trinity, which hath a crosse of redd and blewe upon their brests, of the founda- 
tion of the earl's ancestors, as the minister (that is* the father-minister) did shew, which hath, etc. 
And the said minister hath in Adare a small acre, with certen gardens," etc. N.B. — The lands 
here enumerated as belonging to the abbey and minister are only a small part of the original 
possessions of the abbey. In 1566, Elizabeth demised the Trinitarian Abbey to Sir Warham 
St. Leger, yet, about 1640, " Father Cornelius had a lawsuit with some heretics about the 
recovery of the convent of Adare," as is stated in the letter of Father Burgatt, in Lopez. See 
Manor of Adare, by Lord Dunraven, 1866. 

+ Fontana, Mon. Dom., mentions that in this year, " in the general chapter of the Domini- 
can order held at Rome, the Irish provincial, Father Terence Albert O'Brien (afterward the 
martyred Bishop of Emly) stated that there were in the Irish province about six hundred 
brethren of the order, of whom the greater part perished in the Cromwelliar. persecution, 
either by the sword or by deportation to Barbadoes, or exile ; so that in the following chapter, 
held in 1656, not one quarter survived, many having been slain in their own convents, many 
enduring a lengthened death in the new hemisphere, and all these, being approved by the 
testimony of faith, were found in our Lord Jesus Christ." 



In the Reign of Charles I. 269 

Anno 1642) at the time of his arrest, and shared his captivi- 
ty. The Puritan pirate Forbes, anxious to supply a bloody 
feast to the London mob, sent Father Ultan prisoner to 
England. For three years he was detained a captive in 
Newgate, (London,) and there subjected to many cruelties. 
His constitution yielded to the severity of the prison, 
and he expired, before being led to the scaffold, in the year 
1644." — Bruodin, lib. iv. cap. xv. 



REV. FATHER FRANCIS MATTHEWS, O.S.F. 

" Francis Matthews, of Cork, a theologian,, and learn- 
ed in canon law, guardian of the (Franciscan) College of 
Louvain, and father-minister of the Irish province, who 
had composed several works, and suffered much labor in 
the persecution, was cruelly slain, with many torments, by 
the heretical Puritans, in the year 1644." — Wadding y 
Scrzptores, p. 123. 

— « — 

Anno 1645. 

REV. FATHERS PETER COSTELLO AND GERALD DILLON, O.P.P. 

" In this year, (1645,) Dominican blood still flowed freely, 
for our fathers strenuously upheld the Catholic faith in 
Ireland, preaching the authority of the holy Roman See, 
and publicly wearing the habit of the order, and suffered 
many torments and death at the hands of the sectaries. 
One of them was the Rev. Father Peter Costello, who, 
while denouncing the usurped authority of head of the 
church assumed by the English king, pierced with a 
sword, expired on the spot, and his soul by martyrdom 
ascended to heaven. 

" He was followed to glory by Father Gerald Dillon, 
who had devoted himself to bringing heretics to the know- 



270 Martyrs and Confessors 

ledge of their true mother the Roman Church. Being 
taken prisoner, he was thrown into a wretched dungeon ; 
and there, worn out with the squalor of the prison and 
various sufferings, he breathed out his soul to God." — Mon. 
Dom., sub anno. Hib. Dom. says they were both from the 
convent of Orlar, in county Mayo, but says they suffered 
about the year 1648. I have preferred the authority of 
Fontana, who refers to the acts of the general chapter 
held in Rome in 1656. 



MOST REV. ARCHBISHOP MALACHY 0' QUEELY AND 
THADD^US O'CONNEL. 

" Malachy Queely, or Keely, was a native of the diocese 
of Killaloe, and made his collegiate studies with signal 
success in the University of Paris. He returned to his 
native diocese, where he proved a zealous missionary ; he 
governed the see of Killaloe as vicar-apostolic, and was 
consecrated Archbishop of Tuam in a private chapel at 
Galway, by Dr. Thomas Walsh, Archbishop of Cashel. 
All contemporary writers extol his virtues. He was the 
father, protector, and advocate of the poor. He was one 
of the first members of the Supreme Council of Kilkenny. 
He accompanied the Connaught army when it achieved 
many brilliant victories in 1645 ; but after the coming of 
Sir Charles Coote from the North, with reinforcements of 
Scotch, the Irish were defeated ; their horse fled from a 
party of the enemy on the 25th October, 1645, and Doctor 
Queely was left on the road mortally wounded, at a place 
called Clare, near Sligo. The Puritans first cut off his 
right arm, and then cruelly mangled his body, cutting it 
into small pieces." — Renehan, Collect, p. 402 ; and Moran, 
Persecut. p. 206, from Bruodin. Hardimari s Galway ', and 
Archives of St. Isidore, Rome. 

" Father Thaddseus O'Connel, of the Canons of St. 



In the Reign of Charles I 271 

Augustine, was for six years the companion of Dr. O'Queely. 
Taken with the archbishop, he was carried off to execution. 
He besought the archbishop to give him absolution, and as 
the archbishop raised his right hand to do so the soldiers 
cut it off, and at the same moment struck down Father 
O'Connel." — Bruodin. 

REV. HENRY WHITE. 

" He was a Leinster priest, a most zealous and pious 
pastor, and was in the eightieth year of his age when he was 
taken prisoner by the garrison of Dublin, while hearing 
confessions in the village of Bally nacargy ; and, out of 
hatred to his faith and sacerdotal character, without respect 
for his. innocence or old age, was hung, by order of Sir 
Charles Coote, Governor of Dublin, in the town of Rath- 
connell, in the year 1645."* — Brnodin, lib. iv. cap. xv. 

Anno 1646. 

REV. FATHER DOMINICK NEAGREN, O.P.P. 

"As Fatherf Dominick A. Neagren, (or Neaghten,) of the 
convent of Roscommon, a most religious man and strict 
observer of the rule, continued to wear his habit during the 
bitter persecution, and exhorted the faithful to publicly 
recite the rosary of the Blessed Virgin, he was more than 
once flogged and wounded almost unto death. Yet did he 
persevere in his holy work, and by the order of a chief of 
the soldiers he was slain by the sword. A true Israelite, 
in whom there was no guile." — Mon. Dom. ex Actis Capit. 
Gen. 1650. Hib. Dom. puts him "about 1648." 

* I have put the death of Father White at 1645, as that is the date given hy Bruodin ; but 
the true date is, I think, 1641, or early in 1642, when Sir Charles Coote was ravaging the coun- 
try. He, Coote, was killed at Trim on the 7th May in the latter year, and Bruodin puts the 
death of Father Peter Higgins, who was certainly put to death by Coote in 1641, at 1645, as 
well as that of Father White. Ballynacargy and Rathconnell are two villages in the county 
Westmeath. 

t " Conversus," a monk, but not a priest 



2*]2 Martyrs and Confessors 

REV. FATHER JOHN OLUIN, (OR O'LAIGHIN,) O.P.P. 

" Rev. Father John Oluin, Prior of Derry, who wa.3 
sedulous in administering the sacraments to the Catholics 
in Ireland, and confirming them in their fidelity to the 
holy Roman Church, was taken prisoner by the heretics and 
put in chains. After daily sufferings in prison, rejecting 
great offers from the heretics if he would abandon the 
Roman faith, he preferred death to dishonor. His fellow- 
captives narrated that they saw him in prayer raised up off 
the ground. Finally, being hung and then beheaded, he 
gave up his happy soul to his Creator." — Mon. Dom. ex 
Actis Capit. Gen. 1650. Hib. Dom., after O'Heyn, puts his 
death about 1657 ; but this is impossible, as Fontana 
refers to the general chapter of 1650. 

Anno 1647. 

REV. FATHER RICHARD BARRY, O.P.P. ; WILLIAM BOYTON, 
S.J.; THEOBALD STAPLETON, AND MANY OTHERS. 

In 1647, the Earl of Inchiquin, having administered the 
covenant to his apostate followers, led them on to the assault 
of Cashel. Along his march he everywhere burned the 
crops and massacred the peasantry, and to the present day 
his name is familiar in the household traditions of our 
country as " Murrough of the Burning."* 

" Cashel became not only a prey to the enemy, but a 
very slaughter-house. The city being but badly fortified, 
it accepted the offer of conditions from Inchiquin, and 
opened its gates. The garrison, about 300 in number, to- 
gether with the priests and religious, as also very many 
of the citizens, retired to the cathedral church, which holds 
a strong position, and is styled the Rock of St. Patrick. 

* His name was Morrough O'Brien. 



In- the Reign of Charles L 273 

The enemy having taken possession of the city, and in part 
destroyed it by fire, assailed the cathedral with all their 
forces, but were heroically repulsed by our troops. After 
a long combat the general of the enemy suspended the 
fight, and, demanding a surrender, offered permission to 
the garrison to depart with their arms and ammunition, and 
all the honors of war, requiring, however, that the citizens ' 
and clergy should be abandoned to his mercy. It was then 
that the true heroism of the Catholic soldiers was seen. 
They refused to listen to any conditions unless the citizens 
and clergy, whom they had undertaken to defend, should 
be sharers in them ; and they added that they chose ra- 
ther to consecrate their lives to God on that Rock of St. 
Patrick than to allow that sanctuary to be profaned by 
dogs. The assault was then renewed with extreme feroci- 
ty ; the enemy, being 7000 in number, assailed the church 
on every side, entering by the windows and the shattered 
doors. Nevertheless, for some time the struggle was 
bravely maintained within the church, till our few troops 
were rather overwhelmed by the multitude of the enemy 
than vanquished by them. 

" When all resistance ceased, then was the cruelty of the 
heretics displayed against the priests and religious, one of 
whom was one of our society, by name F. William Boyton. 
Many old men of eighty years of age, aged females, some 
of them in their hundredth year, besides innumerable other 
citizens who had grown old, not only in years but in piety, 
and whose only arms were their prayers, prostrate around 
the steps of the altar, now empurpled them with their 
blood ; while the infirm, who had been borne to the church 
as to a place of sacred refuge, and the innocent children, 
were slain on the very altar. Within the cathedral nine 
hundred and twelve was the number of the slain, of whom 
more than five hundred were of the heretical troops, and 
about four hundred of the Catholics. Everywhere dead 



274 Martyrs a7id Confessors 

bodies were to be seen, which for some days remained un- 
interred. The altars and chapels, the sacristy and seats, 
were covered with them, and in no place could the foot 
rest on anything save on the corpses of the slain." — MS. 
Relatio Rernm quarnmdam, etc., written by the Irish Su- 
perior of the Jesuits, ap. Moran, Persec. p. 27. 

One of the priests who had taken refuge in the cathe- 
dral, Father Theobald Stapleton, was remarkable for his 
piety ; clothed with a surplice and stole, and holding a cru- 
cifix in his left hand, he sprinkled with holy water the 
enemy's troops as they rushed into the sacred edifice. 
The heretics, mad with rage, strove with each other who 
should pierce him with their swords, and thus he was hewn 
to pieces. At each wound the holy man exclaimed, 
"Strike this miserable sinner!" till he yielded his soul into 
the hands of his Creator. 

Of Father Boyton, the Jesuit, we read : 

"As the enemy forced their way in, he exhorted all, with 
great fervor, to endure death with constancy for the Catho- 
lic religion, and was wholly occupied in administering to 
them the sacrament of penance. The enemy, finding him 
at this work, slew the father with his children. But God 
revenged the unworthy death of his servants, and by a 
manifest sign showed the cruelty of this massacre. A gar- 
rison of heretical soldiers was stationed on the rock ; on a 
certain night an old man of venerable aspect appeared to 
its commander, and, taking him by the hand, led him 
forcibly to the top of the church tower, and then asked him 
how he madly dared so impiously to profane that holy 
place. And as he trembled and did not answer, he flung 
him down into the cemetery below, where he lay half-dead, 
and with many bones broken, until the following day, when, 
having fully declared the divine vengeance which had over- 
taken him, he expired." — Tanner, Soc. Jesu. 



In the Reign of Charles I. 275 

Dominick a Rosario gives the following account of the 
death of Father Richard Barry, the Dominican :* 

" The colonel who led the assault, struck with his ap- 
pearance, (for he was a grave and noble-looking man, and 
held a sword in his hand,) said to him, ' I see you are a 
brave man, and I promise you safety if you will cast off 
that dress, which we hate, (he was in the habit of his order ;) 
for the terms of this war allow of no mercy to those colors, 
which excite not our favor, but our rage.'f The father 
answered : ' My dress is the emblem of Christ and his pas- 
sion, and the banner of my warfare. I have borne it from 
my youth, and will not put it off in death. Let my safety 
or doom be that of the emblem of my spiritual warfare.' 
The colonel answered : ' Be more careful of yourself. If 
you fear not to die, you shall soon have your way ; but if 
you desire to live, cast away that traitor's dress ; if you 
look for the foolish vanity of martyrdom, we will take 
care that you shall well earn it.' ' Since so excellent an 
occasion is offered me,' answered the father, ' to suffer is 
my joy, and to die my gain.' Provoked at this answer, the 
colonel gave the father over to the soldiers, who struck him 
and spat on him ; then, tying him on a chair, J they applied 
a slow fire from the soles of his feet to his thighs for about 
two hours, until, while he looked up to heaven and the 
blood bubbled from his pores, the officer ordered his death 
to be hastened by driving a sword through him. The sol- 
diers remained there three days plundering, for they did 
not think the place strong enough for a permanent garri- 
son. During this time a certain pious woman, who was 
of the Third Order of St. Dominick,§ sought out his body 



* He was a native of Cork, and Prior of Cashel, and had desired all his brethren to seek 
their safety by flight, but himself refused to leave his flock. 

t It must be observed that putting off the religious habit was often looked upon as a sort of 
tacit apostasy. 

t The Acts of the General Chapter say, " to a column." 

§ Third Order of St Dominick : those who lived in the world. 



2j6 Martyrs and Confessors 

among all the corpses, an'd when she had found it informed 
the vicar-general. The ' vicar-general, after the departure 
of the enemy on the fourth day, having called together any 
clergy and people who survived, together with the notary 
apostolic, Henry O'Cullenan, who yet lives, (anno 1655,) 
and has borne witness to this, examined the body. He 
found all the marks of his sufferings, his burnt feet and 
legs, the wound going from side to side, and two as it were 
fresh streams of blood. They formed a procession, and 
carried his body to the convent of his order, where, having 
sung the Te Deum, they laid it. The day of his death was 
the 15th* of September, 1647." — Dom. a Ros. p. 339. 

Lord Castlehaven, in his Memoirs, says : 

" It (the rock) was carried by storm, so that within and 
without the church there was a great massacre, and, among 
others, more than twenty priests and religious men 
killed."! 

The nuncio Rinuccini adds : " They slew in it (the 
church of St. Patrick) the priests, and the women who clung 
to the statue of the saint." J 

The rest of the conduct of Inchiquin's soldiers is thus 
described in the Relatio referred to before : 

" The heretics set to work at once to destroy all the 
sacred things which had been stored in the cathedral of St. 
Patrick. The altars were overturned, the images that were 
painted on wood were consigned to the flames, those on 



* Tanner says the 13th. Probably the town was taken the 13th, the rock the 15th. Fon- 
tana, Mon. Dom., gives rather a different account of the first part of Father Barry's death. 
He says : " Standing in his full habit, with a crucifix in one hand and a rosary in the other, he 
exhorted the faithful to meet death bravely for their holy religion. Afterward, being taken 
while praying in a chapel of the church, with incredible cruelty his feet and legs were burnt 
with a slow fire, and, at length, he was pierced through with a sword." Fontana refers to the 
acts of the general chapter held at Rome, 1650, and I am inclined to consider his account the 
more accurate, and that O'Daly, who was himself of a warlike turn, adopted a popular story 
about the sword. I have met with hardly any authentic accounts of priests taking part in ac- 
tual warfare. 

t Memoirs of Earl of Castlehaven, by himself. London, 1681. 

% Rinuccini, Nunziatura, Florence, 1844, p. 416. 



In the Reign of Charles I. 277 

canvas were used as bedding for the horses, or were cut into 
sacks for burdens. The great crucifix which stood at the 
entrance of the choir, as if it had been guilty of treason, was 
beheaded, and soon after its hands and feet were amputated. 
With a like fury did they rage against all the other chapels 
of the city. Gathering together the sacred vases and all the 
most precious vestments, they, through ridicule of our cere- 
monies, formed a procession. They advanced through the 
public squares, wearing the sacred vestments and having the 
priests' caps on their heads, and inviting to Mass those 
whom they met on the way. A beautiful statue of the 
Immaculate Virgin, taken from our church, was borne 
along (the head being broken off) in mock state, with 
laughter and ridicule. The leader of the Puritan army 
had, moreover, the temerity to assume the archiepiscopal 
mitre, and boast that he was now not only governor and 
lieutenant of Munster, but also Archbishop of Cashel." 

I will conclude this account with the following extract 
from Fontana : 

" At the same time Sister Margaret, of our Third Order, 
a woman of more than seventy years of age, while flying 
from the city (Cashel) was intercepted by the heretics, and, 
being constant in the profession of the Catholic faith, was 
slain by the sword." — From the same Acts. 

REV. FATHERS PATRICK HEGERTY, EDMUND CANA, AND 
JOHN STEWART, O.S.F. 

" Father Patrick Hegerty, formerly defmitor of the 
province (Ireland) and commissary visitor, who was a con- 
fessor of Christ in many prisons, being at length delivered 
after a five years' imprisonment among the Scotch, wrote 
to me from the Convent of the Desert, a little before his 
death, a letter dated the 18th June, 1467." — Le Marchant, 
Relatio Viridica. 



278 Martyrs and Confessors 

Here it may not be amiss to give a short account of the 
mission in the Hebrides among the Scotch, where Father 
Hegerty so long labored ; and for this purpose I shall have 
recourse to the pages of Doctor Moran. 

In the month of December, 161 8, Pope Paul V. selected 
three Franciscan fathers from the Irish College of Louvain 
to cultivate the vineyard of Scotland, which for many years 
had been overrun with heresy, and had become a prey to 
the enemies of God. Other Irish priests had been from 
time to time called to the same mission in the early 
part of the century, through the care of Peter Lombard, 
Archbishop of Armagh, who with the title of Primate of all 
Ireland, by authority of the Holy See, united also that 
of Primate of Scotland. To secure, however, an uninter- 
rupted supply of fervent missioners, the religious of St. 
Francis now received it in special charge ; and on the 4th 
January, 16 19, Fathers Edmund Cana* and Patrick Brady, 
with the lay-brother John Stewart,! set out from the con- 
vent of Louvain to brave the perils of persecution in that 
necessitous mission. After two years' incessant labor 
Father Edmund was seized by the Scotch heretics, and 
thrown into a filthy prison, whence, after a long confine- 
ment, he was sent into banishment. The other two escaped 
the pursuit of the heretics, and continued their labor of 
love till, in 1623, a new dawn arose for that mission ; and 
while Dr. Fleming, Archbishop of Dublin, was appointed 
its immediate superior, three new missionaries, selected by 
him — namely, Cornelius Ward, James O'Neill, and Patrick 
Hegerty — were sent thither with most ample authority and 
privileges from the Holy See ; and at the same time the 



* Cana is, I think, the same name as McCann. 

t John Stewart was a native of Scotland, but for many years had lived as a lay- brother with 
the Franciscans in Ireland. About 1614 he was arrested near Dublin, and after suffering 
many hardships in Dublin prison, was transferred to the Tower of London, where many at- 
tempts were made to seduce him from the Catholic faith. He was released about 161 7, and 
sent into Belgium. 



In the Reign of Charles L 279 

old veteran Father Edmund Cana resolved to brave once 
more the fury of the heretics and the penalties of the law. 
The barren wilderness was soon clothed with gladness, and 
Father Hugh de Burgo writes from Dublin on the 17th 
November, 1624: " God has already performed great things 
in Scotland, through the labors of our Franciscan fathers. 
They could even have effected more were it not for the great 
poverty and wretchedness of the country ; for their district 
of Scotland is so impoverished that scarcely can they find 
sufficient means for the most frugal support." 

It appears their labors were chiefly in the Hebrides and 
northern parts. Many interesting particulars are contain- 
ed in a narrative which was drawn up for the Sacred Con- 
gregation of Propaganda in 1637 by Father Ward. He 
had in the interim visited the Eternal City, and on his re- 
turn, having received the benediction of the Bishop of 
Down and Connor, hastened, in November, 1635, to re- 
sume his missionary labor in the Hebrides. Before two 
months had elapsed he had restored fifty heretics to the 
saving fold in the Island of Sgiahanach. During the fol- 
lowing year, (1636,) in twenty-two villages of the islands 
of Eustia and Benimhaola, two hundred and three heretics 
were converted, while in the islands of Barra, Feray, and 
Barnaray no fewer than fifty others were led captive to 
truth. In the last-named island the zealous priest was 
pursued by a Protestant minister, who had procured a 
warrant for his arrest, and in consequence he was obliged 
to fly to the mainland of Scotland. There, on the moun- 
tains of Muidheart and Arasoig, during two months, the 
conversion of two hundred and six heretics was his reward. 
He adds : " The missionary labor in those barbarous and 
remote districts is indescribable, and incredible to those 
who have not witnessed it. Oftentimes the missionary 
father has passed six months there without being able to 
procure any other drink than milk and water ; indeed, 



280 Martyrs and Confessors 

their whole food consists of milk, and in summer they sel- 
dom have bread. In the Hebrides, and in the mountain- 
ous districts of Scotland, there is no city, nor town, nor 
school, neither is there anything like education ; and none 
can be found to read, except a few who received education 
"in distant parts." Father Ward continued on those moun- 
tains until his store of altar-breads and wine for the Holy 
Sacrifice was exhausted ; he then set out on foot for Edin- 
burgh, and, after many risks and dangers, returned with a 
renewed supply to his mountain flock, where, though he was 
at the same time weighed down by a grievous illness, he, be- 
tween the 8th September and Christmas, through the dis- 
tricts of Locheabar, Muiduirt, Sliebhte, and Gleansilge, re- 
ceived back one hundred and thirty-nine heretics into the 
bosom of the Catholic Church. Overcome by his labors, 
Father Ward was soon obliged to return to the compara- 
tive repose of his Irish convent, and Father Patrick He- 
gerty, who had been for eight years guardian of the con- 
vent of Bunargy, in the north of Ireland, opposite Scot- 
land, was chosen prefect of that mission. About 1641 he 
was thrown into prison by the Scots, and detained in close 
confinement for five years. On the 29th August, 1646, he 
wrote from Waterford, expressing his gratitude to God for 
having been freed from prison, and requesting at the same 
time sufficient means to resume his labors in the vineyard 
of Scotland. He died at Multifarnham in 1647. 

For further particulars of these Scotch missions the 
reader is referred to Dr. Moran's work. 



Anno 1648. 

REV. FATHER GERALD GERALDINE AND FATHER DAVID 
FOX, O.P.P. 

" On a certain stormy night the heretical troops sudden- 
ly burst into the monastery of our order at Kilmalloc, 



During the Commonwealth. 281 

which lies beyond the bridge outside the walls, hoping, no 
doubt, to slay many of the brethren ; but the others es- 
caped, and they found only these two kneeling before the 
high altar, in prayer, with their rosaries round their necks. 
They pierced them with swords, and, finally, as they lay in 
their blood, blew out their brains with a musket-shot, and 
so left them, and carried away the spoils of the monaste- 
ry." — Mon. Dom., Hib. Dom. p. 565, and A Rosario. 

Father Geraldine was a priest, Father Fox a simple 
monk. 



Anno 1649. 

REV. FATHERS JOHN BATHE AND ROBERT NETTER- 
VILLE, S.J. ; DOMINICK DILLON, RICHARD OVETON, 

ATHY, AND PETER COSTELLO, O.P.P.; AND MANY 

OTHERS. 

Cromwell landed on our shores in July, 1649, firmly 
resolved to acquire popularity among his fellow-Puritans 
by the extermination of the Irish papists. On his arrival 
in Dublin he addressed his soldiers, and declared that no 
mercy should be shown to the Irish, and that they should 
" be dealt with as the Canaanites in Joshuas time." 

Drogheda was first attacked. It was defended by 3000 
good troops, commanded by Sir Arthur Ashton, a Catho- 
lic. Three times did they repel the assaults of their 10,000 
besiegers. At length, seeing further resistance useless, 
they surrendered on terms. Cromwell, writing to the Par- 
liament, makes it a boast that, despite the promised quarter, 
he himself gave orders that all should be put to the sword ;* 
and, in his Puritanical cant, he styles that brutal massacre 
a rigJiteotis judgment of God upon the barbarous wretches ; 

* " Our men were ordered by me to put them all to the sword." — CromwelFs Letter to 
Lenihal, ap. Lingard, vol. iv. p. 634. 



282 Martyrs and Confessors 

a great mercy vouchsafed to us ; a great thing, done, not by 
poiver or might t but by the spirit of God. The slaughter 
of the inhabitants continued for five days, and the Puritan 
troops spared neither age nor sex, so much so that the 
Ear] of Ormond, writing to the secretary of Charles II., to 
convey the intelligence of the loss of Drogheda, declares 
that " Cromwell had exceeded himself, and anything he had 
ever heard of, in breach of faith and bloody inhumanity ;" 
and the Parliamentarian General Ludlow speaks of it as an 
extraordinaiy severity. The church of St. Peter, within 
the city, had been for centuries a place of' popular devo- 
tion ; a little while before the siege the Catholics had re- 
obtained possession of it, and dedicated it anew to the ser- 
vice of God, and the Holy Sacrifice was once more celebra- 
ted there with special pomp and solemnity. Thither many 
of the citizens now fled as to a secure asylum, and, with 
the clergy, prayed around the altar ; but the Puritans re- 
spected no sanctuary of religion. " In this very place" 
writes Cromwell, " near one thousand of them were put to 
the sword. I believe all the friars* were killed but two, 
the one of which was Father Peter Taajfe, brother to Lord 
Taajfe, whom the soldiers took the next day, and made an 
end of; the other was taken in the round tower ; he confess- 
ed he was a friar, but that did not save him!' We read in 
Johnston's History of Drogheda : 

" Quarter had been promised to all those who should lay 
down their arms, but it was observed only until all resist- 
ance was at an end. Many, confiding in this promise, at 
once yielded themselves prisoners ; and the rest, unwilling 
to trust to the mercy of Cromwell, took shelter in the stee- 
ple of St. Peter's ; at the same time the most respectable 
of the inhabitants sheltered themselves within the church. 
Here Cromwell advanced, and, after some deliberation, con- 

* They were Carmelites. 



During the Commonwealth. 283 

eluded on blowing up the building. For this purpose he 
laid a quantity of powder in an old subterraneous passage, 
which was open, and went under the church ; but, chang- 
ing his resolution, he set fire to the steeple, and as the 
garrison rushed out to avoid the flames they were slaughter- 
ed. After this he ordered the inhabitants in the church to 
be put to the sword, among whom many of the Carmelites 
fell a sacrifice. He then plundered the building and de- 
faced its principal ornaments." 

Thomas Wood, one of the Puritan officers engaged in 
the massacre, relates that a multitude of the most defence- 
less inhabitants, comprising all the principal ladies of the 
city, were concealed in the crypts or vaults of the church ; 
thither the bloodhounds tracked them, and not even to one 
was mercy shown. Lord Clarendon also records that dur- 
ing the five days, while the streets of Drogheda ran with 
blood,* " the whole army executed all manner of cruelty, 
and put every man that related to the garrison, and all the 
citizens who were Irish — man, woman, and child — to the 
sword ;" and Cromwell himself reckoned that " less than 
thirty of the defenders were not massacred, and these" he 
adds, " are in safe custody for the Barb ado es? 

The manuscript written in 1651,! quoted by Dr. Moran, 
gives the following account of the martyrdom of Fathers 
Bathe and Netterville : " On the following day, when the 
soldiers were searching through the ruins of the city, they 
discovered one of our fathers, named John Bathe, with his 
brother, a secular priest. Suspecting that they were reli- 
gious, they examined them, and finding that they were 
priests, and, moreover, one of them a Jesuit, they led them 
off in triumph, and, accompanied by a tumultuous crowd, 



* Down to the present century the street leading to St. Peter's Street retained the name of 
Bloody Street. It is the tradition of the place that the blood of those slain in the church 
formed a regular torrent covra the street. 

t Relatio Rerum, etc. 



284 Martyrs and Confessors 

conducted them to the market-place, and there, as if they 
were at length extinguishing the Catholic religion and our 
society, they tied them both to stakes fixed in the ground, 
and pierced their bodies with shot until they expired." 

Father Robert Netterville was another victim to their fury. 
He was aged and confined to bed by his infirmities ; never- 
theless, " he was forced away by the soldiers, and dragged 
along the ground, being violently knocked against each 
obstacle that presented itself on the way ; then they beat 
him with clubs, and when many of his bones were broken 
they cast him on the highway. On the fourth day, having 
fought a good fight, he departed this life, to receive, as we 
hope, the martyr's crown." — Ibid. 

Three Dominican fathers also received the martyr's crown 
in Drogheda on this occasion, as is recorded by Fontana : 
" Father Dominick Dillon, Prior of Urlar, together with 
Fathers A thy* (the sub-prior) and Richard Oveton, being 
taken prisoners in Drogheda, and led out for execution in 
presence of the whole heretical enemy, poured forth their 
soul in prayer, and so bravely met death." — Ex Act. Cap. 
Gen. 1650 ; Mon. Dom. ad an. 

" This same year and day, Father Peter Costello, sub- 
prior of the convent of Strade, was slain there for the 
faith." — Mon. Dom.\ 



REV. FATHER JAMES O'REILLY, O.P.P. 

" The Rev. James O'Reilly, a learned theologian, a cele- 
brated preacher, and an excellent teacher, was sent from 
Waterford to Clonmel, where he instructed youth in learn- 

* O'Heyn, "with Father Richard Oveton, the Sub-Prior of Athy." It is hard to determine 
which is correct, as Athy is not only the name of a town where there was formerly a Dominican 
priory, but also a common surname. 

t Straid, or Strade, as De Burgo tells us, (Hib. Dom. p. 249,) is a little village in the county 
Mayo, two miles from Athlethan or Ballylehan. Straid, he tells us, was in 1760 celebrated for 
its fairs, which are still held. 



During the Commonwealth. 285 

ing and the Christian religion. At the approach of the 
enemy the* garrison and citizens fled, and he also left the 
city to seek a place of safety ; but, mistaking the road, he fell 
in with a troop of Cromwellian horse, as he carried his 
rosary in his hands. Being asked what he was, he courage- 
ously answered, ' I am a priest, and, though unworthy, a 
Dominican monk. I have lost my way, and, flying from you, 
I have fallen into your hands. I am a Christian, Roman, 
Catholic, and Apostolic ; as I have lived, so will I die. May 
the will of Heaven be done.' They immediately rushed upon 
him, and for nearly an hour he endured, with wonderful 
fortitude and patience, blows and wounds, covered with 
blood, and invoking the name of Jesus, of his Blessed 
Mother, and of our holy father St. Dominick. At length, 
having received more wounds than he had limbs, he fell a 
happy victim." — Hib. Dom. p. 566, ex Act. Cap. Gen. 
1656, and Mon. Dom. 



REV. FATHER RAYMOND STAFFORD, AND SIX OTHERS, O.S.F. 

It was on the nth of October that Cromwell's soldiers 
entered the town of Wexford, which had been surrendered 
by the treachery of one of Ormond's officers. Cromwell, 
as he expressed it, " thought it not good or just to restrain 
the soldiers from their right of pillage, nor from doing exe- 
cution on the enemy ;" he estimates in this letter the num- 
ber of the garrison butchered at 2000. Father Francis 
Stafford, in a letter written at the time, says : " On the 1 ith 
of October, 1649, seven friars of our order, (Franciscans,) all 
men of extraordinary merit, and natives of the town, perish- 
ed by the sword of the heretics. Some of them were killed 
kneeling before the altar, and others while hearing confes- 
sions. Father Raymond Stafford, holding a crucifix in his 
hafcid, came out of the church to encourage the citizens, and 
even preached with great zeal to the infuriated enemies 



286 Martyrs and Confessors 

themselves, till he was killed by them in the market- 
place."* 

Dr. French, the venerable Bishop of Ferns, who himself 
escaped with difficulty, gives the following account of the 
massacre, in a letter to the internuncio, 1673 : "On one 
day I lost, for the cause of God and the faith, all that I 
possessed ; it was the nth of October, 1649 ; on that most 
lamentable day my native city of Wexford, abounding in 
wealth, ships, and merchandise, was destroyed by the 
sword, and given a prey to the infuriated soldiery by Crom- 
well, that English pest of hell. There, before God's altar, 
fell many sacred victims, holy priests of the Lord ; others, 
who were seized outside the precincts of the church, were 
scourged with whips ; others were hanged ; some were ar- 
rested and bound with chains ; and others were put to 
death by various most cruel tortures. The best blood of 
the citizens was shed ; the very squares were inundated 
with it, and there was scarcely a house that was not defiled 
with carnage, and full of wailing. In my own palace a 
youth hardly sixteen years of age, an amiable boy, as also 
my gardener and sacristan, were cruelly butchered ; and 
the chaplain, whom I caused to remain behind me at home, 
was pierced with six mortal wounds. 

"These things were perpetrated in open day by the im- 
pious assassins. From that moment (and this it is that 
renders me a most unhappy man) I have never seen my 
city, or my flock, or my native land, or my kindred. After 
the destruction of the city I lived for five months in the 
woods, with death ever impending over me. There my 
drink was milk and water, a small quantity of bread was 
my food, and on one occasion I did not taste bread during 
five days ; there was no need of cookery for my scanty 
meals, and I slept in the open air without either bed or 

* See the letter in Duffy s Magazine, May, 1847. 



During the Commonwealth. 287 

bed-clothes. At length the wood in which I lay conceal- 
ed was surrounded by numerous bodies of the enemy, who 
anxiously sought to capture me, and send me loaded with 
chains to England. My angel guardian being my guide, I 
burst through their lines and escaped, owing to the swift- 
ness of my able steed." — Letter of Dr. French, ap. Moran. 

" Cromwell's ' ministers of the divine will ' performed 
their part at Wexford, as they had done at Drogheda, do- 
ing execution, not on the armed combatants only, but on 
the women and children also. Of these helpless victims 
many had congregated round the great cross. It was a 
natural consequence in such an emergency. Hitherto they 
had been accustomed to kneel at the foot of that cross in 
prayer; now, with life itself at stake, they would instinc- 
tively press toward it to escape from the swords of the 
enemy. But as far as regards the atrocity of the thing, it 
makes little difference on what particular spot they were 
murdered."* — Lingard y vol. ix. note D. 



REVS. JAMES LYNCH AND RICHARD NUGENT. 

Rev. James Lynch was parish priest of Kells, and Rich- 
ard Nugent of Ratoath, both in the county Meath, and 
were both put to the torture and suffered on the same day 
in defence of the Catholic faith. Father Lynch was a ven- 
erable old man, nearly eighty years of age, and was massa- 
cred in his bed, to which, through infirmity, he had been a 
long time confined. Father Nugent was sent under an es- 
cort to Drogheda, and, a gibbet having been erected within 

* Captain Wood, at the storming of Drogheda, a subaltern in Ingoldsby's regiment, describ- 
ing the massacre in St. Peter's church, Drogheda, at which he was himself present, says : 
" When they (the soldiers) were to make their way up to the lofts and galleries, and up to the 
tower of the church, each of the assailants would take up a child and use it as a buckler of de- 
fence, when they ascended the steps, to save themselves from being brained or shot." And 
he describes his own unavailing attempt to save one young woman out of the general massa- 
cre of all the women there. — Lingardy vol. ix. note D. 



288 Martyrs and Confessors 

sight of the walls, he ended his course with such serenity 
and firmness as confounded his enemies, and drew forth 
the tears and benedictions of the faithful inhabitants 
of that ancient city. — Moran, Persec. p. 193, from Bruo- 

din. 

— ♦ — 

Anno 1650. 

RIGHT REV. DAVID ROOTH, BISHOP OF OSSORY. 

From Wexford, Cromwell advanced in a dreary season 
to Kilkenny, not prepared for a regular siege, but relying 
on the promises of an officer named Tickle that he would 
betray the city of Kilkenny into his hands. The plot was 
discovered and the agent executed, and the custody of the 
city and adjacent country was entrusted to Lord Castleha- 
ven, with a body of twelve hundred men. But the plague 
which had broken out obliged Castlehaven to retire, and 
reduced the garrison to about four hundred and fifty. 
Nevertheless, Sir Walter Butler made a brave defence, and 
repelled the assaults of the besiegers with such spirit and 
success that Cromwell, despairing of taking it by force, 
granted favorable conditions ; but no sooner had the ene- 
my possession of the city than these were violated. The 
Puritans profaned the churches, overturned the altars, de- 
stroyed the paintings and crosses, and profaned all things 
sacred. The vestments, which had been for the most part 
concealed, were discovered and plundered by the soldiery ; 
the books and paintings were cast into the street, and ei- 
ther destroyed by fire or brought away as booty. The holy 
bishop, Dr. David Rooth, venerable for his years, his piety, 
his learning, and his zeal, had just entered a carriage to 
seek for safety by flight when the enemy arrived. They 
inhumanly dragged him from his seat, despoiled him of his 
garments, and then, clothing him with a tattered cloak, 
which was covered with vermin, they cast him into a loath- 



During the Commonwealth. 289 

some dungeon, where, after a prolonged martyrdom, he ex- 
pired, in the month of April, 1650. 

While the pestilence raged within the city, one good 
priest, Father Patrick Lea, was especially distinguished by 
his charity and zeal. Not only was he untiring in adminis- 
tering to the spiritual wants of the sick and dying, but he 
also assisted them in their corporal wants. He adminis- 
tered to the poor even in the most loathsome duties, and 
sometimes too he was seen digging graves and bearing on 
his shoulders to interment the bodies of those who were 
abandoned. It was while exercising this last-mentioned 
excess of Christian heroism that he himself was infected 
with the disease, and expired, a martyr of charity, a few 
days before the arrival of Cromwell at the gates of Kilken- 
ny. — Moran, Perscc. p. 50, who quotes a MS. in his pos- 
session, written in 1667, and entitled Brevis Relatio de 
Press cnti in Hibemia Fidei et Ecclesicz Static. See also 
Leland, Hist, of Ireland, vol. iii. p. 361. 



RIGHT REV. BOETIUS EGAN, BISHOP OF ROSS. 

He was a holy Franciscan friar, appointed to the see of 
Ross, in 1647, by the pope, on the recommendation of the 
Nuncio Rinuccini. In 1650, when the savage bands of 
Cromwellian soldiers under Ludlow were laying waste the 
country, he left the retreat in which he had lain hidden for 
months, in order to visit some distant and abandoned parts 
of his diocese, when, on his return to his lonely hiding- 
place, he was overtaken by a troop of horse under the com- 
mand of Lord Broghill, who was hastening to assist Crom- 
well in the siege of Clonmel. " Lord Broghill promised to 
spare his life if he would use his spiritual authority with 
the garrison of a fort adjacent to prevail on them to sur- 
render. For this purpose he was conducted to the fort, 



290 Martyrs and Confessors 

but the gallant captive, unshaken by the fear of death, ex- 
horted the garrison to maintain their post resolutely 
against the enemies of the king, their country, and their 
religion, and instantly resigned himself to execution."* 
Bruodin adds that he was offered pardon and rewards if 
he would deny his faith and join the Parliamentarians, but 
he rejected the temptation with disdain. He was then 
abandoned to the soldiers' fury, and, his arms being first 
severed from his body, he was dragged along the ground 
to a neighboring tree, and, being hanged from one of its 
branches by the reins of his own horse, happily consum- 
mated his earthly course in November, 1650.! — Bruodin, 
Passio Martyr, p. 530 ; Nib. Dom. p. 490 ; Mooney, (con- 
tinuation.) 



REV. STEPHEN GELOSSE, S.J. 

" He was born in 1617 ; he was teaching poetry in Kil 
kenny College in 1649, anc ^ was tnen reported by the 
visitor, Father Verdier, as a truly good and religious man. 
I believe he made his debut as a minister of religion at 
Waterford, whence he was sent to Ross to attend Father 
Gregory Dowdal in his last illness, and who died in his 
arms in 1650. For the next nineteen years he continued 
to exercise his pastoral functions in that town and neigh- 
borhood. No dangers that threatened him from the Crom- 
wellian party, who filled every place with blood and terror, 
could deter this genuine hero from doing his duty ; no 
weather, no pestilential fever, no difficulties, could hold him 



* Leland, vol. iii. p. 362. He refers to Cox. 

t The compiler of the Supplement to Wadding's Scriptores says Dr. Egan was a member 
of the Third Order of St. Francis, and that thirteen other members of the fame institute suffer- 
ed with him, (I presume he means about the same time,) and he refers to a contemporary writer, 
F. Bordonus, as his authority. 



During the Commonwealth. 29 1 

back from visiting the sick and the dying in their meanest- 
hovels. His purse, his time, his services, were always at 
the command of the distressed Catholics ; it was his food 
and delight to exercise the works of mercy, corporal and 
spiritual. Though the tyrant Cromwell had issued a pro- 
clamation to his troops (and they were in the habit of 
searching the houses of respectable Catholics) that should 
they apprehend a priest in any house, the owner of such 
house should be hung up before his own door, and all his 
property be confiscated, and that the captors of the priest 
should be rewarded at the rate destroyers of the wolf for- 
merly received, (so little value was attached to a priest's 
life,) nevertheless Father Gelosse managed every day to 
offer up the unbloody Sacrifice of the altar. His extraor- 
dinary escapes from the clutches of his pursuers bordered 
on the miraculous. He assumed every shape and charac- 
ter : he personated a dealer in fagots, a servant, a thatch- 
er, a porter, a beggar, a gardener, a miller, a carpenter^ 
a tailor with his sleeve stuck with needles, a milkman, a 
pedlar, a seller of rabbit-skins, etc., thus becoming all to all 
in order to gain all to Christ. However, he was four 
times apprehended, as he told Father Stephen Rice, but 
his presence of mind never forsook him, and he ingenious- 
ly contrived to extricate himself without much difficulty. 
After the restoration of Charles II. he set up a school 
at Ross, which took precedence of all others in the country, 
whether rank, numbers, proficiency, discipline, or piety 
be taken into consideration ; but this was broken up by 
the persecution of 1670. He then removed to the vicinity 
of Dublin, where he taught about forty scholars, and in 
August, 1673, he returned to Ross to reopen his school, 
but at the end of three months was obliged by the fanatical 
spirit abroad to abandon this favorite pursuit. He was 
still living in the summer of 1675, when I regret to part 
company with him." — Oliver. 



292 Martyrs and Confessors 

REV. NICHOLAS MULCAHY 

Was parish priest of Ardfinnan, in the county Tipperary, 
and was famed for his zeal and apostolic labors. He had 
been frequently advised to fly from the storm, but his 
affectionate solicitude for his flock rose superior to every 
counsel. During the siege of Clonmel he was seized upon 
by a reconnoitring party of Cromwell's cavalry. Immedi- 
ately on his arrest he was bound in irons, conducted to the 
camp of the besiegers, and offered his pardon should he 
only consent to use his influence with the inhabitants of 
Clonmel, and induce them to give up the town ; but he 
steadfastly refused, and was consequently led out in sight 
of the besieged walls, and there beheaded while he knelt in 
prayer for his faithful people and asked forgiveness for his 
enemies. — Moran } from Bruodin. 



FATHERS JAMES MORAN, DOMINICK OR DONATUS BLACK, 
AND RICHARD OVEDON, O.P.P., 

" Of the convent of Athenry, were slain through hatred 
of the faith, and thus offered as sacred victims to Christ." 
— Mon. Dom. and Hib. Dom. y ex. Act. Cap. Gen. 1656. 



REV. FATHER MILER MAGRATH, O.P.P., 

" A son of the convent of St. Dominick, of Benfica, (near 
Lisbon,) and an alumnus during some years of the Irish Do- 
minican College of the Blessed Virgin of Lisbon, then pro- 
curator and vicar, was led by his zeal for souls to venture 
into Clonmel, then held by a strong garrison of the here- 

* Of Father Moran it is said he was a lay monk ; of the other two it is not said whether 
they were priests or not, but they are not styled reverend, from which I gather they were not 
in holy orders. Fontana puts their martyrdom in 1650 ; De Burgo, in 1651. 



During the Commonwealth. 293 

tics. He was seized just after he had finished Mass, while 
administering the Blessed Eucharist to a dying man, and 
with the sacred pix in his hands was instantly led off to 
execution. He prayed fervently with the people, and 
amidst their tears and admiration he was hung." — A Rosa- 
rio, p. 354, (211 ;) also Hib. Dom. p. 566, and M on. Dom. 



REV. FATHER ARTHUR O'CUIFFE, O.P.P. 

" Father Arthur O'Cuiffe, of the convent of Tralee, 
suffered much for the faith under Cromwell, and lay for a 
whole year in a noisome dungeon. During that time the 
Rev. Father Edmund MacMorice, a pious, sincere, and 
humble man, was of great service to religion, for he was 
able to travel about the district round his convent in 
tolerable freedom, because, being a near relative of the 
Lord of Kerry, no one dared to molest him." — O Heyn, 

Epilogus, p. 21. 

— *. — 

JLnno 1651. 

RIGHT REV. TERENCE ALBERT O'BRIEN, O.P., BISHOP OF 
EMLY; REVS. JOHN COLLINS, JAMES WOLF, AND 
DAVID ROCHE, O.P.P. ; ALSO REVS. BRIEN, BARRY, AND 
LEE, OF THE CONGREGATION OF ST. VINCENT. 

The life of Bishop O'Brien has been well traced by 
Father Meehan, in the Hibernian Magazine for 1864, and 
the greater part of the following account is taken from his 
pages.* 

Terence Albert O'Brien was born in the city of Lim- 
erick, in the year 1600, of parents descended from the 
ancient house of O'Brien. While yet a child he received 
the earliest rudiments of education from his pious mother, 

* Duffy's Hibernian Magazine, April, 1864. 



294 Martyrs and Confessors 

and an aged priest, who found constant welcome and 
protection in his father's house, and who, in all probability, 
was the first to inspire him with the idea of devoting 
himself to the ministry. As he grew to boyhood the 
desire struck deeper root in his heart, and he lost no time 
in placing himself in communication with his uncle, Mau- 
rice O'Brien, who was then prior of the Dominican convent 
of his native city. The uncle was not slow in seconding 
the lad's wishes, and he accordingly had him received into 
the novitiate of the Friars Preachers ; for we need hardly 
add that the monastery of St. Saviour, founded in the 
thirteenth century by Donat O'Brien, had long since 
shared the fate of other religious houses in Ireland. Hav- 
ing been received into the order, young O'Brien was sent 
to the convent of St. Peter Martyr at Toledo, where there 
was then a vacancy for an Irish student, and arrived there 
just as he had entered on his twentieth year. The Domi- 
nican school of Toledo was then one of the most renown- 
ed in Spain ; here O'Brien spent eight years, when he was 
ordained priest, and, as the wants of the Irish mission 
were then pressing, his superiors commanded him to lose 
no time in preparing for the journey home. 

On arriving in Ireland, the scene of his first mission was 
Limerick, where he took up his residence with the other 
Dominicans in a hired house, where they lived in commu- 
nity as well as the circumstances of the time would allow 
It was a time of peril to all priests, but especially to those 
of the religious orders, for Lord-Deputy Falkland was then 
enforcing the penal enactments. The Dominicans were 
not, however, objects of so much jealousy to the govern- 
ment as the Franciscans, who took more part in politics. 

Availing himself, therefore, of the opportunities which 
were thus afforded him of doing good, Father O'Brien 
settled down in the little convent at Limerick, where, with 
the rest of the brethren, he toiled through many dreary 



During the Commonwealth 295 

years in the quiet performance of the duties which belong- 
ed to his calling. Fifteen years did he labor in Ireland, dur- 
ing which time he was twice elected prior of his native 
convent of Limerick, and once of that of Lorragh.* 

In 1643, the Dominican chapter, assembled in the Abbey 
of the Holy Trinity at Kilkenny, unanimously elected 
him provincial of the order. A short time previously he 
had seen his native city identify itself with the confede- 
rates, and we may readily imagine with what feelings of 
devoted gratitude he and the other members of his order 
must have regarded the men who restored to them that 
splendid temple which William Marshall, Earl of Pembroke, 
erected for the honor of God, and as a last resting-place 
for himself, some few years before he closed his mortal 
warfare.f Toward the end of 1643, Father O'Brien was 
called to Rome to assist at a general chapter of the Do- 
minicans, which was held in the following year, when many 
ordinances were made for the better government of the 
Irish province, and the revival of the order in Ireland, 
where it had suffered so terribly during the persecutions of 
Elizabeth and James I. The acts of this chapter,^ indeed, 
throw much light on the state of the Irish Church at the 
period, and it is only reasonable to suppose that we are 
indebted to O'Brien for the valuable information they 
contain. This chapter, " in order that proper provision 
should be made in that province (Ireland) for literary 
studies," ordered that " five universities, or houses of gene- 
ral study, should be established, for the five parts of the 
kingdom, in the convents of Dublin, Limerick, Cashel, 
Athenry, and Culraha ; and if from the hardness of the 
times such studies cannot, at any time, be carried on in 
one of these convents, then the provincial shall appoint an- 

* Situated in the barony of Lower Orraond, and founded by Walter de Burgo in 1269. 
1 The Black Abbey of Kilkenny. % Hib Bom. p. 115. 



296 Martyrs and Confessors 

other convent for such time/'* At this chapter Father' 
O'Brien was raised to the rank of master in theology, and 
appointed one of the two persons to decide all disputes as 
to the boundaries of the Dominican convents in Mun- 
ster.f 

As soon as the council terminated its sessions, O'Brien 
set out for Lisbon, to visit the Dominican house which had 
been founded in that city by O'Daly who was then en_ 
gaged on his History of the Geraldines.% About the mid- 
dle of July, 1644, while O'Brien was still at Lisbon, intelli- 
gence from Rome led his friends to suppose that it was 
the intention of Urban VIII. to advance him to the coad- 
jutorship of Emly, and indeed the announcement seemed' 
so reliable that he at once set out for Ireland to take part 
in the election of his successor in the provincialate. There 
can be little doubt that Urban did mean to have him con- 
secrated bishop, but as his holiness died in the very 
month in which the nomination is said to have been made, 
the bulls were not despatched, and O'Brien's promotion 
was consequently postponed, and did not take place before 
the third year of the pontificate of Innocent X. On his 
return to Ireland, O'Brien fixed his residence in the con- 
vent of Limerick, where, as provincial and prior, he exert- 
ed himself indefagitably for the interests of his order, 
which had lately received a large accession to its mem- 
bers from Rome, Louvain, and other places on the Conti- 
nent. 

It has already been mentioned that O'Brien was not con- 
secrated in 1644, as De Burgo thought, as is shown by a 
letter of the Nuncio Rinuccini, dated Kilkenny, January 

* There were in 1646 in Ireland forty-three Dominican convents, with about 600 monks. 

t A convent, once founded, was always held tc exist, and to preserve its ecclesiastical privi- 
leges, as long as any brethren remained although the original building might be confiscated. 
Thus the Dominican fathers residing in a lodging in Limerick were " the Convent of 
Limerick." 

X A Rosario, Perscc. p. 204. 



During the Commonwealth. 297 

1st, 1646, in which he says : " Father Terence, provincial 
of the Dominicans, is a man of prudence and sagacity. 
He has been in Italy, has had considerable experience, 
and the bishop who wishes to have him for his coadjutor 
is, I am told, in very feeble health."* Eight months after 
the date of that letter — that is, in August, 1646 — when 
the Bishop of Emly was on the point of death, the nuncio 
wrote again to Rome, recommending various candidates 
for dioceses that were then either vacant or about to be 
so ; and, among others, he named O'Brien as " one who 
deserved the highest advancement Rome could bestow, 
and whose claims and qualifications were duly set forth in 
a memorial which the clergy had forwarded in his favor." 
The answer, however, did not reach Ireland till October, 
1647, when Rinuccini had the satisfaction of learning that 
the Holy See sanctioned O'Brien's promotion, and that of 
the other candidates for whom he was interested ; and 
Father O'Brien was consecrated in November, 1647. 

Dr. O'Brien lost no time in taking possession of his see, 
but he found it in a deplorable state. The victory of Co- 
noe-na-Noss (13th November, 1647) had made Inchiquin, 
the bitter enemy of the Catholics, master of nearly all 
Munster, and his soldiers ravaged all the country. At 
Kilkenny Dr. O'Brien had zealously supported the policy 
of the Nuncio Rinuccini, and joined in the ill-advised ex- 
communication ; and when the nuncio was at Galway, be- 
fore his departure, he hastened thither to see him. When, 
however, he had reached a village within three miles of 
Galway, (probably Oranmore,) word was brought him that 
the nuncio had sailed, and he then returned to his diocese, 
where he remained until May, 1650, when the progress of 
the Cromwellians compelled him to return to Galway. 

In August, 1650, Dr. O'Brien acted with those prelates 

* Nunziatura, pp. 84, 152, 



298 Martyrs and Confessors 

who, after discarding Lord Ormond, and insisting on the 
appointment of Clanricarde as Viceroy, offered the Protec- 
torate of Ireland to the Duke of Lorraine. He then re- 
turned to his- diocese, and, after a brief sojourn there, fixed 
his final abode in Limerick, just as Ireton was inarching 
on that devoted city. Ireton commenced the siege of 
Limerick early in 165 1, but it was not till July that the 
investment of the place was complete. I need not recapi- 
tulate here the well-known incidents of that heroic siege, 
in which the besieged suffered more by pestilence than 
from the efforts of the enemy. Eight thousand citizens 
perished by the pestilence, and the heroic missioners of 
St. Vincent of Paul, who were in the city, made the mem- 
ory of their order dear to Catholic Ireland by their zeal in 
attending the sick, a task in which they were aided by 
Drs. Walsh, Archbishop, of Cashel, and O'Dwyer, Bishop 
of Limerick,* who were also in the city. 

At length, on the 27th of October, the treachery of Co- 
lonel Fennell enabled Ireton to compel the surrender of 
the city.*}" Twenty-four persons were excepted from quar- 
ter by the articles of capitulation. Knowing the fate that 
was reserved for him, Dr. O'Brien retired to the pest-house, 
in order to devote the last hours of his life to the benefit 
of his suffering fellow-citizens, and to preparing himself for 
death. Here he was found by the officers sent to arrest 
him, and brought before Ireton, who told him he was to be 
tried by a court-martial, and imprisoned till the sentence 
was pronounced. The bishop heard this unmoved, and 
when asked did he want counsel, calmly replied that all he 
required was his confessor. This boon was granted, and 
Father Hanrahan, a member of his own order, was suffer- 



* He was the only one of the twenty-four to whom quarter was denied by Ireton who es* 
caped. — Borlase and Ludlow, ap. Leland, vol. iii. p. 387. 

1 Moran, Persecutions, p. 61 ; Haverty's History of Ireland, p. 591 ; Hibernian Magazine 
p. 256. 



During the Commonwealth. 299 

ed to pass the whole day and night of the 30th October in 
his prison. On the following evening he was led out to 
execution, and, as Father Hanrahan related, walked as joy- 
fully to the place as to a feast. His contemporary, De 
Marinis, relates his execution thus : " He went with joy to 
the place of execution, and then, with a serene counte- 
nance, turning to his Catholic friends, who stood in the 
crowd inconsolable and weeping, he said to them, ' Hold 
firmly by your faith, and observe its precepts ; murmur 
not against the arrangements of God's providence, and 
thus you will save your souls. Weep not at all for me, but 
rather pray that in this last trial of death I may, by firm- 
ness and constancy, attain my heavenly reward/ The 
head of the martyr was struck off and placed on a spike on 
the tGwer," (" which is on the middle of the bridge." — A 
Rosario,) " and long after seemed to drop fresh blood, and 
uncorrupted and unchanged in aspect, flesh, or hair — a tri- 
bute, as may be thought, to that virginal purity which it is 
universally believed he preserved to the end."* Thus he 
went to his reward, on the vigil of All Saints', 165 1. De 
Marinis and A Rosariof relate that the holy bishop sum- 
moned Ireton to the judgment-seat of God to answer for 
his crimes; and on the 18th dav afterward that bloody 
persecutor was seized with the plague, and, after sixteen 
clays, expired in great torments. Dr. Moran mentions that 
the spot where this holy bishop was martyred is yet point- 
ed out and venerated by the Catholics of Limerick. J 

With Bishop O'Brien perished another Dominican, Fa- 
ther John Collins. He had made himself peculiarly ob- 
noxious to the Parliamentarians by the active part he had 
taken in the war against them ; he had, in the habit of his 
order, and with a crucifix in his hand, led a storming party 
at Bunratty, and had- made himself remarkable during the 

* Hib. Dom. p. 489. 

t In Hit Dom. loc. cit. ; and A Rosario, Persec. p. 207. t Moran, Persec. p. 180. 



300 Martyrs and Confessors 

siege for his courage, and was in consequence excepted by 
Ireton from the capitulation. He was sought out after the 
surrender, and, being found, was at once put to death.* 

Father James Wolf, another Dominican, received the 
crown of martyrdom at the same time. I give the account 
of his martyrdom from the Acts of the General Chapter, 
held in Rome in 1656, p. 150 :f 

" He was an old man, and preacher-general, who had 
before been a long time in prison for the faith, and in this 
last persecution was as a wall against the enemies of the 
faith. He was taken in Limerick while offering the Mass, 
and in a few hours afterward was sentenced to be hung, and 
brought out into the market square, where he made a pub- 
lic profession of his faith, and exhorted the Catholics to 
constancy in the religion of their ancestors, and that with 
so much ardor that it moved his very enemies. Standing 
on the top step of the ladder, and about to be swung off, 
he joyously exclaimed, ' We are made a spectacle to God 
and angels a7id men — of glory to God, of joy to angels, of 
contempt to men! Having said this, he was hung, and so 
went to his crown." 

O'Daly adds that he had been absent from the city dur- 
ing the siege, but that, when it was taken and all the 
priests there either slain or driven away, zealous for the 
souls of the citizens, he secretly returned to administer the 
sacraments to them, but had hardly been there eight days 
when he was taken and hung ; \ and this agrees with what 
is said in the Acts of the General Chapter, that he was taken 
while saying Mass. 

It is probable that Father David Roche, O.P.P., whom 
De Burgo mentions to have been sent as a slave to the 
West Indian tobacco plantations in this year, was taken at 
Limerick.§ 



* A Rosario, Persec. p. 17. t Hib. Dom. p. 568. 

t A Rosario, Persec. p. 217. § Hib. Dom. p. .571. 



During the Commonwealth. 301 

Here also we may commemorate the virtues and suffer^ 
ings of the fathers of St. Vincent in Limerick. St. Vincent 
of Paul, that angel of charity, cherished a special affection 
for the persecuted Church of Ireland. " The sole detail of 
all he did and procured to be done in favor of the ecclesi- 
astics banished from Ireland by Cromwell would exceed 
my limits, and wear out the patience of my readers." And 
the archives of Paris yet preserve many records of the un- 
tiring efforts of the saint to provide a home and a refuge 
for the multitude of our countrymen who, despoiled of all 
they possessed, and exiles from the land of their birth, 
were cast upon the shores of France. The Bishop of 
Waterford, who had been an eye-witness, gave an account 
to Clement XI. of the assistance in money, ornaments, and 
clothing sent by the saint to the suffering Catholics in 
Ireland, declaring at the same time that as St. Patrick and 
St. Malachy in earlier ages, so Father Vincent was raised 
up by God, in this period of persecution, to be the salva- 
tion of our country. 

It was in 1646 that the first missionary fathers 
landed in Ireland ; and, during the five years that they 
remained, Limerick was the chief scene of their labors. 
The happy fruits of their zeal were soon visible to all ; and 
it is recorded, as a striking fact, that none of the clergy of 
any mission which they visited were found to abandon 
their spiritual charges. " All remained with the flocks 
entrusted to them, assisting and defending them until they 
were banished, or suffered death for the Catholic faith ; 
and, in effect, it was granted to all to endure one or the 
other."* 

As early as 1648, the Archbishop of Cash el wrote to St. 
Vincent that, through the zeal of his good fathers, "the 
people had been excited to piety, which was increasing every 

* Abelly's Vie de Saint Vincent, lib. iv. chap, viii., in Dr. Moran, Pcrsec. p. 7, to whom I 

am indebted for all this account of the Vincentians. 



302 Martyrs and Confessors 

day ; and although these admirable priests have suffered 
inconveniences of every sort since their arrival in this 
country, they, nevertheless, have not ceased for an instant 
to apply themselves to their spiritual mission, and, blessed 
by heavenly grace, they have gloriously propagated and 
increased the worship and glory of God." And at the 
same time the Bishop of Limerick wrote that, "by the 
example and edifying deportment of these fathers, the 
greater part of the nobility of both sexes had become 
models of piety and virtue. It is true that the troubles 
and the wars of this kingdom have been a great obstacle 
to their functions ; nevertheless, the truths of faith have 
been so engraven by their means upon the minds of the 
inhabitants of both the cities and the country parts that they 
bless God in their adversities equally as in prosperity." 

When the storm raged with all its fury in 1657, only 
three priests of the order remained in Ireland, but their 
labors were incessant, and an abundant spiritual harvest 
was their reward. At that time there were 20,000 com- 
municants within the walls of Limerick. " The whole city 
assumed the garb of penance, to draw down the blessings 
and the grace of Heaven." 

In April, 1650, St. Vincent wrote to the superior of the 
order, encouraging the members to meet courageously the 
dangers which then threatened them. In his letter he 
says : 

" You have given yourselves to God, to remain im- 
movably in the country where you now are, in the midst 
of perils, choosing rather to expose yourself to death than 
to be found wanting in charity to your neighbors. You 
have acted as true children of our most admirable Father, 
to whom I return infinite thanks for having produced in 
you that sovereign charity which is the perfection of all 
virtues. I pray him to fill you with it to the end, that, 
exercising it ir all cases and everywhere, you may pour it 



During the Commonwealth. 



forth into the hearts of those who want it. Seeing that your 
companions are in the same disposition of remaining, 
whatever may be the danger from war and pestilence, we 
are of opinion that they should be allowed to stay. How 
do we know what God intends in their regard ? Certainly 
he does not bestow on them so holy a resolution in vain. 
My God, how inscrutable are thy judgments ! Behold, at 
the close of one of the most fruitful missions we have ever 
as yet witnessed, and perhaps, too, the most necessary, 
thou dost stop, as it were, the course of thy mercies upon 
this penitent city, and dost lay thy hand still more heavily 
upon her, adding to the misfortune of war the scourge of 
pestilence ; but all this is done in order to gather in the 
harvest of the elect, and to collect the good grain, into thy 
eternal granary. We adore thy ways, O Lord !" 

"Although the three fathers who had labored in Lime- 
rick during the siege escaped the fury of Ireton on its 
surrender, one of them resolved to remain in the city to 
assist with his sacred ministry the remnant of its Catholic 
citizens, and after awhile consummated there his holocaust 
of charity. The two others, Brien and Barry, escaped 
with about 120 other priests and religious, in various 
disguises, mixed up with the garrison of the place, who by 
the terms of the capitulation obtained their lives and 
permission to retire from the city. As there was no 
quarter allowed for any ecclesiastics, these holy men, sure 
that death awaited them, passed the night preceding their 
escape in prayer and preparation for their martyrdom. 
They were not, however, recognized ; and after escaping 
from the city they separated, Father Brien taking the road 
toward his native district in company with the Vicar- 
General of Cashel, while Father Barry went toward the 
mountains, where a charitable lady received him, and con- 
cealed him for two months. A bark freighted for 
France appearing on the coast, he availed himself of the 



304 Martyrs and Confessors 

opportunity thus presented, embarked in the vessel, and 
happily landed in Nantes. This caused indescribable joy 
to St. Vincent, who had already given up these two 
fathers as lost, believing them to have been involved in the 
general massacre of Limerick. Although these good 
priests escaped from that general massacre, the congrega- 
tion paid its tribute to the persecution, and a lay-brother 
of the order, named Lee, being discovered by the heretics, 
was brutally put to death by them before the eyes of his 
own mother ; his hands and feet were first amputated, and 
his head was then bruised to atoms."* 

Father Abelly, the author of the Life of St. Vincent, 
mentions another martyr, whose name, however, is not 
given. He writes as follows : 

" It happened that one of these heroic pastors, having 
gone to a missionary father (who lived in a cabin at the 
foot of a mountain) to make his annual retreat, was on the 
following night discovered in the act of administering the 
sacrament to some sick persons, and cut to pieces on the 
spot by the heretical soldiery. His glorious death crowned 
his innocent life, and fulfilled the great desire he had to 
suffer for our Lord, as he himself had declared in the 
preceding year at a mission given by the Vincentian 
fathers in Limerick." 

Here also we may hand down the names of those 
martyrs of charity who are known to have perished of the 
plague while attending the sick in this disastrous year. 

Of these there are enumerated by De Burgo, of the Do- 
minican order alone, in the year 1651: Fathers Michael 
O'Clery, Prior of Waterford, at Waterford, and Gerald 
Bagot ; Thaddaeus 0'Caholy,f William Geraldine, and 
John Geraldine, of Limerick ; and Donald O'Brien, in 
county Clare ; and of the Jesuits, Father Francis White, 
at Waterford. 

* Act; of the order, and a letter of St. Vincent, ap. Moran. t Or O'CahasL 



During the Commonwealth. 305 

My readers will, I am sure, be glad here to read the 
account of their noble devotion given by O'Daly :* 

" The first who earned this crown was the Reverend 
Father Michael O'Clery, an alumnus of our college of 
Lisbon, and prior of our convent of Waterford. When the 
plague raged in the town of Waterford, the bishop of the 
place called together all the priests and monks of the place, 
and laid before them how great a work of charity and how 
acceptable to God it would be to devote themselves to 
administer the sacraments to those of their Catholic 
brethren who were perishing of the plague. All the 
others held their peace ; but our prior, and a worthy priest, 
Patrick White, a canon of Waterford, of a very good 
Waterford family, and his brother, Father Francis White, 
of the Society of Jesus, and minister of the college of St. 
Patrick of Lisbon, offered themselves for this duty. They 
prepared themselves for three days by a general confession 
of their sins and the reception of the Blessed Sacrament, 
and then entered on their labors in the pest-house, where 
they diligently discharged the duty of physicians of souls. 
After having heard the confessions of almost all, they 
were themsehes seized with the disease and perished 
together. 

" The second was Father Gerald Bagot, also of our col- 
lege of Lisbon, a man of good family and talents. Having 
come into Limerick from the country, he was asked to 
step out of his way to hear the confession of a man who 
was at the point of death from the plague. The pious fa- 
ther immediately consented, and purchased the man's sal- 
vation with his life, for no sooner had he completed that 
work of charity than he felt himself attacked, and, not dar- 
ing to enter the city, in three days after, having made his 
confession and communion, he died outside the walls. 

* A Rosario, Persec, p. 222, in Father Meehan's translation ; but he has abridged it. See 
p 367 of original, and aj>. Hib. Dom. p. 570. 



306 Martyrs and Confessors 

"The third was Father Donald O'Brien, who died in the 
same way in Thomond, (county Clare,) having taken the 
plague by hearing confessions. 

"The fourth was Father Thaddaens O'Cahasi, who, in 
the siege of Limerick, when the sword destroyed without 
and the pestilence within, was assigned the post of attend- 
ing to the hospital of the soldiers, which was near our con- 
vent, and was made a refuge for all the sick except those 
stricken with the plague. But the plague made its way in 
there and seized our father, and, having received the sacra- 
ments, he died on the fifth day. Father John William 
Geraldine, having gone to hear his confession, took the 
disease and died on the third day. He was a very religi- 
ous and learned man, a preacher-general,* and had been 
prior of several convents. 

" When this John was dying, his brother, Gerald Geral- 
dine, also a Dominican father, came to hear his confession, 
and took the disease, of which he died on the third day, 
having piously received the sacraments. 

"The Reverend Father Thomas Philbin, (MacPhilbin,) 
formerly Prior of Burishoole, and Father Charles MacCuil, 
lost their lives in this work of charity, in 1652." 



REV. FATHERS LAURENCE O'FERRALL AND BERNARD 
O'FERRALL, O.P.P. 

These two appear to have been brothers of the ancient 
family of O'Ferrall. Of Father Laurence, Dominick a Ro- 
sario says he studied in the college of Lisbon, and was for 
some time guardian of it. Of Father Bernard, De Burgo 
says that he was predicator generalis of the order ; and 
from the Acts of the General Chapter, held at Rome in 1656, 

* Prasdicator generalis ord. 



During the Commonwealth. 307 

he and Fontana give the following account of their mar- 
tyrdom : 

" They were seized at early dawn, while praying in the 
church of their native convent of Longford, which had 
been abandoned by the brethren on account of the violence 
of the persecution. Father Bernard was at once over- 
whelmed by the persecutors with more than four-and-twen- 
ty deadly wounds, whereof he expired, yet lingered long 
enough to receive the last sacraments from another of our 
fathers before he expired ; and this he had himself 
foretold. Brother Laurence they dragged, wounded, be- 
fore the governor, and on discovering that for the faith, and 
in obedience to the authority of the nuncio,* he had joined 
the Catholic army, he was condemned to death. He was 
to have been executed on the following day, and joyfully 
awaited his fate, but by the intercession of some friends it 
was deferred for three days. This was most grievous to 
Laurence, who blamed his intercessors, and spent the 
whole three days in prayers and tears, beseeching God 
not to suffer him to lose the palm of martyrdom. At 
length he obtained his desire, and from the top of the lad- 
der he addressed an eloquent exhortation to the Catholics ; 
then, placing the rosary round his neck, and holding a 
crucifix in his right hand, and bidding the people farewell, 
he blessed them, and, meekly folding his hands under his 
scapular, submitted himself to the executioner. When the 
executioner, after placing the cord round his throat, pushed 
him off the ladder, while hanging he drew both his hands 
from under his scapular and raised the cross on high in 
both, as the emblem of his triumph. The heretical gov- 
ernor was so much struck that he allowed his body to be 
given to the Catholics, and solemnly interred by them, and 
gave a safe conduct for the clergy to attend, fearing lest 

* A Rosario says his captors discovered some letters from the apostolic nuncio sewed up in 
bis inner garments. — A Rosario, p. 212. 



308 Martyrs and Confessors 

otherwise there might be tumults." — Hib. Dom. p. 569, and 
Mon. Dom. 



REV. FATHER .ENEAS AMBROSE O'CAHILL, O.P.P. 

" Father Ambrose O'Cahill, of the convent of Cork, 
after a glorious trial, earned the crown of heaven by the 
effusion of his blood ; for, while proceeding from one place 
to another, to administer the sacraments to the faithful, by 
chance he fell in with a troop of the heretic horse, and, 
having been recognized by them to be a priest, was by 
them cut in pieces on the spot." — Mon. Dom., ex Act. Cap. 
Gen. 

See also Hib. Dom. p. 567, and A Rosario, p. 358, (215,) 
who calls him an alumnus and sacristan of the college of 
Lisbon, and says his body was cut in small pieces, and 
scattered for food for ravens. O'Heyn, p. 13, says he was 
taken near Cork. 



REV. FATHERS WILLIAM O'CONOR, THOMAS O'HIGGINS, 
AND WILLIAM LYNCH, O.P.P. 

" The same year the venerable Father William O'Conor, 
of the convent of Clonmel, a most pious man, and intent 
on the salvation of souls, was taken by the heretics while 
administering the sacraments to the faithful, and, being 
stripped of all his clothes, was beheaded." — Mon. Dom., ex 
Actis eisdem. 

He was Prior of Clonmel, and defmitor of the provincial 
chapter. — See Hib. Dom. p. 329. 

"Also at Clonmel, Father Thomas O'Higgins was 
thrown into prison by the heretics, and, being condemned 
to death by hanging for having confessed the faith, re- 
ceived his crown" — Hib. Dom. and A Rosario. 

A Rosario adds in a note to this work : 



During the Commonwealth. 309 

" Since I wrote the above, certain religious and learned 
men have testified to me (and they are above suspicion) 
that three others of our religion suffered death — Father 
William Lynch, who was hung ;" and he adds Fathers 
O'Conor and Costello, whose deaths we have given from 
the Acts of the General Chapter, but which O'Daly had not 
heard of before. 

REV. FATHER VINCENT GERALD DILLON, O.P.P. 

" Father Dillon, of the convent of Athenry, who was 
of a noble family, and remarkable for his piety, formerly 
vicar of the Irish Dominican convent of Lisbon, proceed- 
ed to England with the Irish who served under the king's 
standard to hear the confessions of the Catholics in that 
army, and, being taken prisoner by the rebels after the 
battle of York, was thrown into prison, and there kept un- 
til he died of hardship and hunger, in 165 1." — A Rosario, p. 
359, (216,) and Mon. Dom. 



REV. FATHER STEPHEN PETIT, O.P.P. 

" Father Stephen Petit, of the convent of Athenry, 
while hearing the confessions of Catholic soldiers, was 
struck by a bullet, and so completed his course, in the 
year 165 1." — Hib. Dom. p. 570, ex Act. Cap. Gen. Romce, 
1656. 

De Burgo points out that this is clearly another from 
the father who fell in 1642, being from different convents, 
and their fate narrated at different chapters of the order. 



DONATUS O'BRIEN, 

" As we learn from an eye-witness of Cromwellian cruelty, 
was descended of the royal race of the O'Briens, a most 



310 Martyrs a?id Confessors 

generous man, and of surpassing hospitality. After the 
Protestants had plighted to him their faith, and given him 
a safe conduct, he was advancing one day to meet them, 
when a certain Protestant knight shot him through the 
body. Dissatisfied with this cruelty, when the venerable 
old man (then aged about sixty-four years) had entered a 
hut, half-dead, that he might in penitence commend his 
soul to God, a soldier followed, set fire to the hut, and 
burned this courageous martyr, in Thorn ond, a.d. 165 1." 
Morisoiis Threjiodia, ap. Moran } Persec. p. 196. 



REV. BERNARD FITZPATRICK 

■' Was a holy and illustrious priest, descended from the 
noble lineage of the Barons of Ossory. Flying for refuge 
from the fury of the Protestants to a cave, he was pursued 
by them ; entering the cave, they cut off the head of this 
most holy man, who was equally renowned throughout the 
whole kingdom for his life, his doctrine, and his lineage. 
They affixed his head to a spike over the town gate, to be 
meat for the fowls of the air, and left his flesh to be de- 
voured by the beasts of the field." — Ibid. 



RIGHT REV. ARTHUR MAGENNIS, BISHOP OF DOWN AND 

CONNOR. 

" Few dioceses in Ireland contributed more martyrs from 
its hierarchy than the ancient see of Down and Connor. 
Under James I., and again under Charles I., we find its 
bishop laying down his life for his flock. During the per- 
secution of Cromwell, it not only shared with Clogher the 
glory won for the Irish Church by the heroism and forti- 
tude of Heber McMahon, but merited, moreover, to have 
its own chief pastor put to death for his unflinching attach- 



During the Commonwealth. 311 

ment to the Catholic faith. This was Dr. Arthur Magen- 
nis, a member of the Order of St. Bernard, or Cistercians.* 
Dr. French, indeed, in his catalogue of the Irish bishops, 
merely states that he died at sea ; and Bruodin only adds 
that he was advanced in years, that he was at the time 
suffering from a violent fever, and that he was subjected 
by the heretics to much hardship and persecution. From 
the Bishop of Clonfert, however, we learn by what pecu- 
liar art the persecutors effected his death. Even the most 
ruthless savage would desist from torturing a venerable 
aged man, thus a victim of disease and anguish ; but the 
Puritan sailors, with brutal ferocity, delighted in adding to 
his sufferings. A cannon was fired off at his bedside, and 
though it was charged with powder only, such was the ter- 
ror that it excited in the aged bishop that he instantly ex- 
pired." — Moran, Persec. p. 209. 



REV. DENIS NELAN, O.S.F 



" He was a priest of the Order of St. Francis, and de- 
scended from noble parents in the county Limerick. Be- 
fore entering the Franciscan order, he was for many years 
parish priest of Kilragty, and his labors produced an abun- 
dant spiritual harvest. From 1642 to 165 1, these labors 
were happily continued by him as a Franciscan father, till 
at length Limerick became a prey to the Puritan strangers. 
With many others, Father Denis fell into their hands, 
being arrested at the house of his relative Mr. Laurence 
Neherenny. With his hands tied behind his back, he was 
led along, like a convicted robber, to the Island of St. 
Cunan, or Cronan, where was then the heretical camp. 
The whole way along he fervently exhorted the heretical 
soldiery to attend to their eternal salvation ; and when in- 

* Hib. Dom. p. 490, where he gives Dr. French's catalogue. 



3T2 Martyrs and Confessors 

terrogated by the commander whether, renouncing the 
doctrines of Rome, he would subscribe to the Puritan 
tenets, he courageously replied that he had long anxiously 
sighed for an occasion when he might lay down his life for 
the Catholic faith, and he would not only never renounce 
Its saving doctrines, but was ready, moreover, to endure a 
thousand torments in its defence. These words were 
scarcely uttered when the surrounding soldiers, erecting a 
temporary gallows, hanged him on the spot." 



REV. FATHER THADD£US CARIGHY, O.S.F. 

" He made his solemn profession among the religious 
of the Franciscan convent of Inish, and filled the whole 
district of Thomond with the odor of his virtues. In 165 1, 
he was arrested by the Cromwellians in the neighborhood 
of his convent, and was tempted with the promise of riches 
and dignities should he renounce the Catholic faith ; but 
neither allurements nor tortures could turn him aside from 
the path of virtue, and by order of his captors he was 
immediately hanged and his body barbarously mangled." 
— Bruodin, lib. iv. cap. xv. 



REV. HUGH MACKEON, O.S.F. 

" Ulster, among other flowers of the Franciscan order, 
produced that most pious man Father Hugh Mackeon, the 
son of respectable parents in the county Armagh. He 
made his profession in the convent of Armagh, and was so 
esteemed by his superiors that he was ordained priest 
and appointed a confessor. When the Cromwellian rebels 
prevailed in Ulster, Father Hugh, by order of his superiors, 
betook himself to Connaught, where he was taken prisoner, 
and, in hatred of the faith, thrown into prison in Athlone, 



During the Commonwealth 313 

(Allonia,) where, overcome by the squalor of the place, he 
died, in the year 165 1."* — Bruodin, lib. iv. cap. xv. 



REV. ROGER MACNAMARA, O.S.F. 

" The family of Macnamara is an ancient and illustrious 
one in Clare, and of it was Father Roger, son of Donald 
Macnamara and Marina Mahony. He made his profession 
in the convent of Quenhy,f (built magnificently of black 
marble by his ancestors,) and was ever a model of a 
simple and pious religious. From the time he was ordain- 
ed priest he daily offered the divine sacrifice of our 
redemption with great devotion. When the heretics 
were ravaging the province, and Father Roger bearing 
consolation to the dispersed Catholics, God determined to 
reward his piety. Therefore, by the divine permission, he 
was taken near the town of Clare, and, when neither 
threats nor promises could shake his constancy in the 
faith, he was pierced with bullets and then beheaded, anno 
165 1." — Bruodin, lib. iv. cap. xv. 



DANIEL CLANCHY AND JEREMIAS NERIHING, O.S.F. 

" Daniel Clanchy was born of a respectable family at 
Tradria, in Thomond, and became a lay-brother in the Fran- 
ciscan convent of Quenhy in 1640, where he lived as be- 
came a worthy disciple of St. Francis until 165 1, when he 
was taken by the heretics and hung in hatred of the faith. 

" Jeremias Nerihing was the son of wealthy parents, (who 

* In 1658, twenty-five pounds were paid to Lieutenant Edward Wood, on the certificate of 
William St. George, Esq., of the county Cavan, for the arrest of five priests, among others the 
Rev. Hugh MacGeown. (See under that year.) Either this one was different from Father 
Hugh Mackeon, or Lieutenant Wood had to wait seven years for his blood-money ; probably 
they were different. 

t Convent of Quenhy, or Quinchy, see page 321. 



314 Martyrs and Confessors 

were well known to me.) Despising the vanities of this 
world, he, in 1640, became a lay-brother in the same con- 
vent of which Father Bonaventure Gorman was at that 
time guardian. Taken by the heretics, he was beaten with 
sticks, and, with a rope round his neck, was threatened 
with death unless he would renounce what they called the 
errors of popery. Brother Jeremias answered that out of 
the holy Roman Church there is no salvation, and was 
immediately hung, the same year.' '—Brnodin. 



REV. EUGENE O'TEMAN, O.S.F. 

" He was born in the county of Donegal, and, seeking 
to follow in the steps of Christ in evangelical poverty, be- 
came an alumnus of the Franciscan convent of Donegal, 
where for some years he led an exemplary life. When the 
regicides tyrannized over Ulster, Father Eugene was 
taken by the garrison of Balasaun. He was scorned, his 
religious habit torn off him, he was flogged, and so cut to 
pieces by the soldiers' swords that eighteen wounds were 
counted on his body. Eugene was left for dead on the 
road, but was found by some of his brethren still breathing, 
and was carried to their residence, where, to their great 
grief, he expired four days afterward." — Brnodin. 



REVS. DONATUS O'KENEDY, DONATUS SCRENAN, FULGEN- 
TIUS JORDAN, ROMANDUS O'MALY, THOMAS TULLY, 
AND THOMAS DEIR, OF THE ORDER OF HERMITS OF 
ST. AUGUSTINE. 

Bruodin says he found no record of them except in a 
book published in Belgium by an anonymous writer, and 
dedicated to the Archduke Leopold, entitled Sanguinea 
Ercmo Martyrum Hibemice Ord. Eremit. S. P. Augustini. 



During the Commonwealth. 315 

The writer did not give the exact dates of their martyr- 
dom. 

" Father Donatus O'Kenedy was of a noble family in Or- 
mond, a monk of the Order of the Hermits of St. Augus- 
tine, and was hanged in hatred of the faith. Of the same 
order were Fathers Donald Screnan and Fulgentius Jor- 
dan, slain in like manner ; also Father Romand O'Maly, 
of a Galway family, and Father Thomas Tully, and Bro- 
ther Thomas Deir." — Bruodin. 



REV. FRANCIS SULIVAN, O.S.F. 

" He was of the race of the chiefs of Baer and Bantry, 
in Munster, and lector jubilatus in theology. He was ap- 
pointed over the Irish province in 1650, and governed the 
flock entrusted to him as well as he could till the year 165 1, 
when the rebels prevailed in Munster. Father Francis, the 
provincial, remained in Kerry while the heretics ravaged 
all the country. However, to escape the tempest, and 
after the example of the apostles, to preserve himself for 
the care of the flock committed to him, he hid himself with 
many others in a cavern, but did not thereby escape the 
lynx eyes of those who sought out papists to slay them. 
The holy father was found out and shot to death in the 
cavern, which thus served as his tomb, about the beginning 
of December, 165 1." — Bruodin. 



BROTHER ANTONY BRODER, OR O'BRODER, O.S.F. 

"The family of O'Broder is a respectable Catholic one 
in the county of Galway, possessing land not far from a 
celebrated lake called Lough Derighert.* Brother An- 
tony Broder was a member of this family and an ornament 

* I cannot identify this lake. 



3 16 Martyrs and Confessors 

to the Franciscan order. When the persecution of the 
rebels laid waste the country, Antony, who was then only 
a deacon, had, like other ecclesiastics, to seek a hiding- 
place, He sought and, as he thought, found one in the 
castle of Turlevachan, in the county of Galway. It proved, 
however, an unsafe retreat, for Charles Coote, alike a bar- 
barous tyrant and a cunning hunter-out of priests, found 
him out and immediately hanged him, in the year 1652. 

" On the fourth week after the martyr had been hurriedly 
buried, on the place of execution, his friends came and dug 
up his body, in order to bury it in consecrated ground. 
Strange to say, when he was dug up in his Franciscan 
habit, blood flowed freely from the nostrils. I leave the^ 
explanation of this fact to others." — Bruodin 



REV. HILARY CONRY, O.S.F. 

" He was born of noble parents, in the county of Ros- 
common. Having completed his studies, he embraced a 
life of evangelical poverty in the Franciscan convent of 
Elphin, which was then a noviceship of that order. The 
piety and learning of Conry so pleased the fathers that he 
was ordained priest. One day, by order of the father- 
guardian, he went out to beg through the district, as is the 
custom of the mendicant orders, and was taken prisoner 
on the road by that cruel tyrant Charles Coote, carried to 
Castle Coote, and there hanged."* — Bruodin. 

* Bruodin puts his death at 1642, but I think that must be a mistake for 1652. In 1642, Sir 
Charles Coote was in Dublin and its neighborhood, at Naas and Trim, and was killed at the 
latter place on the 7th May in that year. His son was appointed Provost-Marshal of Con- 
naught, and persecuted there in 1652, when he might well have taken Father Conry near El- 
phin The mention of Castle Coote (which is in Cavan) is strange. It should be added that 
the life of Father Conry in Bruodin comes in the midst of several others who suffered in 1652, 
bo that 1642 would seem to be a clerical error. 



During the Commonwealth. 317 

Anno 1652. 

RIGHT REV. FRANCIS KIRWAN, BISHOP OF KILLALA ; DR. 
JAMES FALLON, VICAR-APOSTOLIC OF ACHONRY ; AND 
MANY OTHERS. 

The town of Galway, the last fortress of the Irish, sur- 
rendered to Ludlow on the 20th March, 1652, on articles 
securing the inhabitants their residence within the walls 
of the town and the enjoyment of their houses and estates. 
The taxation was soon so great that many of the towns- 
people quitted their habitations and removed their cattle, 
unable to endure it. The tax for. the support of the sol- 
diery was collected from the inhabitants every Saturday by 
sound of trumpet, and if not instantly paid the soldiery 
rushed into the house and seized what they could lay 
hands on. The sound of the trumpet every returning 
Saturday shook their souls with terror, like the trumpet of 
the day of judgment. On the 23d July, 1655, all the 
Irish were directed to quit the town by the 1st Novem- 
ber following, the owners of houses, however, to receive 
compensation at eight years' purchase ; in default, the sol- 
diers were to drive them out. On the 30th October this 
order was executed. All the inhabitants, except the sick 
and bedrid, were at once banished.* But to return to 
the date of the surrender of the town. Colonel Stubbers, 
who was appointed military governor of the town upon its 
surrender, under the pretence of taking up vagrants and 
idle persons, made frequent nightly excursions with armed 
troops into the country, and seized upward of a thousand 
people, often without discrimination of rank or condition, 
whom he transported to the West Indies, and there sold 
as slaves. Upward of fifty of the Catholic clergy were 
shipped to the islands of Arran and Boffin, until they 
could be transported to the West Indies, and, being allow- 

* Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement, p. 146. 



318 Martyrs and Confessors 

ed only twopence a day each for their support, they were 
nearly famished.* 

Dr. Francis Kirwan, the Bishop of Killala, was at this 
time lying hid in a country-house at a short distance from 
the city. For eight months he continued there, in a small, 
narrow room, which, besides two beds for himself and his 
chaplain, was barely able to contain a chest. This served 
for an altar, and while the holy sacrifice was offered up 
each day one bed had to be removed to afford standing- 
room for the celebrant. The intense cold of winter was 
endured without a fire, and during the whole eight months 
only thrice did the bishop go for an instant from this hid- 
ing-place. On one occasion he was carried out wrapped 
in a sheet, while the enemy were engaged in searching 
every corner of the house for arms, and when met by the 
soldiers he was recognized only as a feeble and worn-down 
old man, and well does his biographer compare his many 
sufferings at this period to those of the early pastors of the 
Catholic Church. When the bishop deemed it more se- 
cure to enter the town, he was obliged to take refuge in 
the topmost story of the house, underneath the tiles, and 
this, too, at mid-winter, without one spark of fire. Some- 
times, too, he was forced to go out on the roof, and, when 
the pursuers approached, to descend into a neighboring 
house by the dormer window. When at length the good 
bishop, finding it impossible to remain concealed any long- 
er, surrendered, he and several other ecclesiastics were 
treated as galley-slaves ; they were marched along in bodies, 
surrounded by soldiers, drums beating and bugles sound- 
ing ; and when, by the diligence of priest-catchers, many 
other ecclesiastics were cast into prison, they were locked 
up in houses hired for the occasion, and for which the 
prisoners themselves had to pay. During his imprison- 

* See Anno 1657. 



During the Commonwealth. 319 

ment the holy man found occasion frequently to celebrate 
the sacred mysteries, and at a window administered to the 
children the sacrament of confirmation. No sooner was it 
discovered by the government that the bishop and his com- 
panions were thus engaged in conferring spiritual blessings 
on the Catholics, than their banishment was resolved on. 
The confessors of Christ were suddenly carried off to a 
ship, and on their way were surrounded by a terrible es- 
cort, nor had they any previous notice of the decree of 
banishment, lest their friends might succor them with 
some viaticum. 

For further particulars see under 1655, notice of Dr. 
Burke. 

Throughout the whole province of Connaught the 
persecution raged with the same fury. Thus, when Dr. 
James Fallon, who governed the diocese of Achonry as 
vicar-apostolic, was arrested in Iar Connaught, the heretics 
so plundered him of his copious collection of books that not 
even a breviary was left with him. Before he was made a 
prisoner he for a long time was exposed day and night to 
the inclemency of the winter, till he at length erected a 
small hut at the base of a rock : here he remained till the 
goats, browsing on the foliage, stripped the branches, and 
then he was obliged fo seek elsewhere a place of refuge. — 
Moran, Persec. p. 72, and Life of Dr. Kirwan, by Lynch. 



REV. BONAVENTURE DE BURGO, O.S.F. 

" He was a son of the noble knight Oliver de Burgo, 
Lord of Ropy, in the county of Mayo, and Anabella Conor, 
his wife. At an early age he embraced the rule of St. 
Francis, in 1635, and carefully observed it until 1652, 
when, with Thaddaeus Conor, Lord of Bealnamilly, he was 
hung, in hatred of the faith." — Brtwdin, lib. iv. cap. xv. 



320 Martyrs and Confessors 

REV. ANTONY O'FERRALL, O.S.F., 

" Was taken while preaching, by the Cromwellians, at 
Tulsk, in Roscommon, in the castle of Sir Ulysses de 
Burgo, and immediately hung, anno 1652." — Bruodin. 

REV. JOHN CAROLAN, S.J. 

" In 1649, ne was living at Galway, aged sixty-four, of 

which period he had passed twenty-four years in the 

society, but was in priest's orders before his admission. 

The good old man was literally hunted to death by the; 

Cromwellian myrmidons, between the years 1652 and 1656- 

Though not actually taken by his inveterate and savage 

pursuers, he died of exhaustion and hunger." — Oliver, 

Collections. 

— ♦ — 

REV. EUGENE O'CAHAN, O.S.F. 

" He was of a noble family in Thomond, (Clare,) and enter- 
ed the Order of St. Francis of the Strict Observance, in 
the convent of Inish, in the sixteenth year of his age, and 
there made great progress in religion. He made his pro- 
fession about the year 1628, and by order of the heads of 
the Irish province proceeded to Rome, and there, in the 
celebrated college of St. Isidore, under the great men who 
then presided over it, Fathers Luke Wadding, Antony 
Hickey, James Bridges, and Thaddaeus Daly, (whose me- 
mory is in benediction,) made such progress in learning 
and religion as might be expected from a generous youth 
under such masters. When he had finished the study of 
theology, he proceeded to Naples, by direction of the very 
Rev. Father Benignus a Genna, then minister-general, and 
there taught philosophy among the Fathers Minorites. 
Anxious to serve his country, he obtained leave of the 



During the Commonwealth. 321 

father-general to proceed to Ireland, and sailed for that 
country in the year 1641, and devoted himself to mission- 
ary labors. When the Catholics obtained power in 1643, 
Father Eugene, by direction of his superiors, opened a 
school in the town of Quenhi,* in Thomond, which he 
taught together with the Rev. Father Thaddaeus O'Brien, 
of the same order. So great a number of youths from all 
parts of Ireland flocked to this school that in 1644 there 
were more than eight hundred students, (among whom 
were I and eighteen other Bruodins.) When, through the 
evil chance of war, and, alas ! the dissensions of the 
Catholics, this school was dispersed, Father Eugene was 
made guardian of the convent of Inish, which had been 
founded by the liberality of the chief of the O'Briens. He 
proved himself diligent and blameless in this office for 
three years. At length he was taken prisoner by the 
heretics, then overrunning the country, in the year 165 1, 
and grievously scourged. Father Eugene, more solicitous 
of saving souls than of preserving his life, besought them 
not to cease their cruelty to himself, but to abjure their 
errors. On the other hand, they threatened him with 
death unless he would embrace their creed, and when they 
saw that they prevailed nothing they hanged the good 
father, on Mount Luochren, in Thomond, anno 165 1." — 
Bruodifiy lib. iv. cap. xv. 



REVS. ROGER ORMILY AND HUGH CARIGHY. 

" The Rev. Roger Ormily was a native of Clare, and a 
secular priest, who for thirty years was parish priest of 
Brentire. When he was upward of sixty years of age, he 



* Or Quinchy, according to Ware, where was a convent of Friars Minors, founded in 1433 
by Macon Macnemarra. 



3 22 Martyrs and Confessors 

fell into the hands of the Cromwellians, then ravaging 
Clare, and, without any form of trial, when he confessed 
himself a priest, was hung, and so gained everlasting life, 
on the 1 2th October, 1652. In the same year, day, and place, 
and by the same death, Father Hugh Carighy obtained the 
crown of martyrdom. He was a parish priest of Clare, and 
in the seventy-sixth year of his age, and the forty-fourth 
of his priesthood." — Bruodin, lib. iv. cap. xv. 



REV. NIELAN LOCHERAN, O.S.F. 

" He was a native of Ulster, and a Franciscan of the 
convent of Armagh, where he made his profession about 
his twentieth year, and made good progress in virtue, and 
would have made more had not his days been shortened by 
the fury of the heretics. The good father was taken pri- 
soner (I know not by what chance) by the soldiers of Lon- 
donderry, and dragged to that town, with his hands tied 
behind his back, like a robber. After he had endured tor- 
tures the governor ordered him to be brought before him, 
and offered him a wife and a good benefice if he would apos- 
tatize. Nielan, with an angelic courage, replied that he had, 
following the example of St. Peter the Apostle, voluntarily 
relinquished all, that he might gain Christ, and that he 
would not, by looking back, deprive himself of the reward 
promised in heaven ; nay, he exhorted the governor to save 
his soul, redeemed with the blood of Christ, by abjuring 
heresy and embracing the Catholic faith. Furious at this 
audacity, the governor at once ordered him to be hanged. 
Joyfully did Father Locheran go to the place of execution, 
and was then hung, from enmity to the Catholic faith, anno 
1652." — Bruodin, lib. iv. cap. xv. 



Daring the Commonwealth. 323 

LADY ROCHE AND LADY BRIDGET FITZPATRICK. 

The latter of these two noble and pious ladies was exe- 
cuted in this year, the former in 1654, but as the account 
of their deaths is given by the same author, I have placed 
them here together. 

Morison thus narrates their fate : 

" The inhuman fury of the Protestants was not satisfied 
with the slaughter of men, but they also drew their swords 
against women. Thus, the noble Lady Roche, wife of 
Maurice, Viscount of Fermoy and Roche, a chaste and 
holy matron, whose mind was solely occupied with prayer 
and piety, being falsely accused of murder by a certain un- 
grateful English maid-servant, (whom she had compassion- 
ately taken when a desolate orphan, and supported and 
educated,) was hanged in Cork, in 1654, although stricken 
in years, and destined in the course of nature soon to die. 
The noble Lady Bridget, of the house of Darcy, wife of 
Florence Fitzpatrick, one of the Barons of Ossory, was 
also hanged by the Protestants, at Dublin, in 1652, with- 
out the form of law or justice. 

"What shall I yet say ? Time would fail me to narrate 
the martyrdom of chiefs, nobles, prelates, priests, friars, 
citizens, and others of the Irish Catholics, whose purple 
gore has stained the scaffolds almost without end ; who by 
faith conquered kingdoms and wrought justice ; of whom 
some had trials in mockeries and stripes, moreover, also, of 
chains, and prisons ; others were overwhelmed with stones, 
cut asunder, racked, or put to death with the sword ; 
others have wandered over the world in hunger, thirst, 
cold, and nakedness, being in want, distress, and afflicted, 
wandering in deserts, in mountains, and in dens, and in 
caves of the earth. And all these, being approved by the 
testimony of the faith, without doubt received the pro- 
mise." — Morison, Threnodia, p. 72, ap. Moran, Persec. p, 
197, and Bruodin, lib. iv. cap. xv. 



324 Martyrs and Confessors 

DANIEL CONNERY AND DANIEL MOLLONY. 

Morison gives two other striking examples of the practi- 
cal working of the laws against Catholics. He says : 

" I myself saw this iniquitous law (against harboring a 
priest, 27 Eliz. cap. ii.) put in execution in the city of Lim- 
erick by Henry Ingoldsby, the governor of that city. A 
gentleman of Thomond, named Daniel Connery, was ac- 
cused of harboring in his house a priest, and, being con- 
victed on his own confession, (although the priest had a 
safe-conduct from the same governor,) he was sentenced to 
death, and, the sentence being (mercifully, as was said) 
commuted into confiscation of all his goods and imprison- 
ment, afterward commuted for perpetual exile. He had a 
wife of a noble family of Thomond, and twelve children : 
his wife fell ill, and died from the want of necessaries ; and 
of his children, three handsome and virtuous girls were 
shipped as slaves to Barbadoes, where, if yet alive, they 
live in miserable slavery ; the rest of his children, who 
were too young to work, either died of hunger, or live 
miserably under the yoke of their enemies. 

" I also saw the second part of this law (as to denounc- 
ing a priest) put in force in the same Limerick, under the 
same governor, in the year 1652, against a noble and hon- 
est Catholic of the name of Daniel Mollony, of Thomond, 
who, coming to Limerick on account of some business, 
chanced to meet in a heretic inn a priest, a relative of 
his, named David Mollony. The priest was afterward be- 
trayed and taken prisoner, and Daniel was summoned to 
answer why he had not informed the magistrates that 
there was a priest there. He answered that he was a 
Catholic, and that there was no law obliging one to de- 
nounce a priest, although there was one not to harbor or 
feed one, (and this was the truth, for the law was not passed 
till three years later.) But, notwithstanding this prudent 



During the Commonwealth. 325 

answer, the governor ordered his ears to be cut off by the 
executioner, which was done. I could give a thousand 
such examDles." — Morisoiis Threnodia. 



REV. FATHERS JOHN O'CUILLIN AND EDMUND O'BERN, O.P.P. 

" Father O'Cuillin, of the convent of Athenry, was a 
living example of religion and observance of the rule, most 
given to prayer, and (though of delicate health) to fasting, 
ever content with a poor habit, yet of so excellent a genius 
that without masters he had acquired great knowledge of 
science. He learnedly confuted the heretics and animated 
the Catholics, shunning no danger in the defence of the 
authority of the Holy See. Being at length taken by the 
heretics at Limerick, and pierced with many wounds, he 
joyfully laid down his life for Christ. His head was cut 
off and borne about on a spear as a trophy. 

" The same year Father Edmund O'Bern, who was twice 
sub-prior of the convent of Roscommon, after enduring 
much for faith, country, and the respect due to the Holy 
See, and therefore sought for execution by the sectaries, at 
length fell into their hands, and was instantly pierced with 
bullets, axes, and swords, and so purpled his purity with 
his blood." He was taken by the garrison of Johnstown. 
— Mon. Dom. and Hib. Dom. ex Act. Cap. Gen. ; and Bruo- 

din, lib. iv. cap. xv. 

— * — ■ 

Anno 1653. 

REV. FATHER THADDjEUS MORIARTY, O.P.P. 

He was prior of the convent of Tralee, and a model to 
those under him in defending the orthodox religion and the 
authority of the Roman pontiff; neither labors, nor suffer- 
ings, nor imprisonment, nor death itself could break his 
courage. 



32b Martyrs and Confessors 

When the Cromwellian persecution was raging, an op- 
portunity offered itself for his escape to a safer place, but 
he courageously refused, being moved with compassion for 
the Catholics, to whom he knew his presence was most 
necessary, on account of the death of priests, to administer 
the sacraments. He was taken prisoner and carried to 
Killarney, and condemned to death. From the top of the 
ladder he exhorted the faithful with great earnestness to 
have patience and preserve the faith, and, having recited 
the verse, " Into Thy hands I commend my spirit,'* he met 
a glorious death, the very sectaries being struck with admi- 
ration, and saying, " If ever a papist were a martyr, he was 
one." — Mon. Dom. ex Act. Cap. Gen. 1656 

He suffered on the 15th October, 1653. 

" He had studied in the convent of Toledo, where he 
made much progress in learning, having first entered the 
college of Lisbon. His brother, Father Thomas Moriarty, 
of the same convent, was also a most pious and zealous 
priest, and labored much in the same district, where he 
died." — Hib. Dom. p. 573 ; Dom. a Rosaiao, p. 355. 



FATHER BERNARD O'KELLY, O.P.P., 

" A Dominican of the convent of Roscommon, lay long in 
prison, where he suffered much from the filth of the prison, 
the weight of the chains with which he was bound, and 
hunger, being compelled to sell his only coat for bread. At 
Gal way he was condemned to death for having exhorted 
some Catholic women to constancy in the faith, and, meet- 
ing a glorious death by the gallows, departed to heaven." 
—Mon. Dom. ut supra. 



Daring the Commonwealth. 327 

SEVERAL JESUIT FATHERS. 

On the 6th January, 1653, a proclamation was published 
against the Catholic clergy. By it all ecclesiastics, secu- 
lar and regular, were commanded, under penalty of being 
judged guilty of treason, to depart from the kingdom with- 
in twenty days, and should they return, of the penalties 
and confiscations specified in the 27th of Queen Elizabeth 
— that is, those of treason. A manuscript in the Irish 
College, Rome, quoted by Dr. Moran, continues : 

" When this edict was published, the superior of the 
Jesuits was lying sick of fever in the house of a respectable 
citizen, unable to move in bed, not to say to journey on 
foot or on borseback ; a petition was therefore presented 
to the governor of the city that he might be allowed to re- 
main some few days, till his strength should return. But 
the governor replied that, though the whole body of the 
Jesuit was dead, and life remained only in one hand or foot, 
he must at once quit every inch of Ireland. The sick man 
was forthwith seized in bed, hurried along for about seven- 
ty Irish miles, in the midst of a severe winter, to a seaport, 
and then, with two other Jesuits and forty secular priests, 
was cast into a vessel bound for Spain." — Status Ret Oath, 
in Hibernid hoc anno 1654, in Archiv. Colleg. Hib. Rome?, 
ap. Moran, Persec. p. 99. 

Borlase, the Protestant historian, estimates the number 
of Irish transported in the year 1654 at 27,000. A con- 
temporary document states that no less than 20,000 Irish 
took refuge in the Hebrides and other Scottish islands. 
Dr. Burgatt, agent of the Irish clergy in Rome, afterward 
Archbishop of Cashel, in a relation presented to the Sacred 
Congregation in 1667, says : " In the year 1649, there were 
in Ireland, twenty-seven bishops, four of whom were met- 
ropolitans. In each cathedral there were dignitaries and 
canons ; each parish had its pastors ; there were, moreover, 



328 Martyrs and Confessors 

a large number of other priests, and innumerable convents 
of the regular clergy. But when Cromwell, with exceeding 
great cruelty, persecuted the clergy, all were scattered. 
More than three hundred were put to death by the sword 
or on the scaffold, among whom were three bishops ; more 
than a thousand were sent into exile, and among these all 
the surviving bishops, with one only exception, the Bishop 
of Kilmore, who, weighed down by age and infirmities, as 
he was unfit to discharge the episcopal functions, so too 
was he unable to seek safety by flight. And thus for some 
years our island remained deprived of its bishops, a thing 
never known during the many centuries since we first re- 
ceived the light of Catholic faith." — Moran, loc. cit. 



REV. M. MORISON, 0. MIN. 

Probably to about this year may be referred the impri- 
sonment of Father Morison. Writing in 1659, ne sa Y s : 

" I myself, the least and most unworthy of all, (absit glo- 
riari nisi in cruce) passed thirty months in a dark dungeon* 
thirty feet below the earth, with irons of 47 lb. weight on 
my feet and hands, sometimes alone, sometimes in company 
of robbers, often beaten and wounded, and at last sent into 
exile. Now there are so few priests left, that there are 
many Catholics, especially in Munster, who have not been 
able to receive the sacraments for one, two, three, and even 
six years, and some have journeyed 120 miles to confess 
and receive the Blessed Eucharist once." — Morison s Tkre- 
nodia. 

THE LADY H0N0RIA DE BURGO AND H0N0RIA MAGAEN. 

" The same year Sister Honoria de Burgo proved her 
devotion to her heavenly Spouse by uniting to the lilies of 
virginity the purple of martyrdom. She was the daughter 



During the Commonwealth. 329 

of Richard, dynast, of the De Burgos in Connaught, and in 
her fourteenth year received the habit of the Third Order of 
St. Dominick, at the hands of Father Thady Dunne, the 
then provincial of Ireland, and lived piously in a house 
which she caused to be erected near our convent and 
church of Burishool.* Here she continued in works of 
piety through the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles, 
up to a great age ; a very mother to the needy and poor 
and never, as is believed, having committed a mortal sin. 
In a time of great dearth she, with another sister of the 
Third Order, was near perishing of hunger, but in their sore 
need the spouses of Jesus Christ implored his aid who 
alone could save them, and then came presently to the 
door a fair young man, (it may be thought an angel,) who 
provided the handmaidens of Christ abundantly with all 
they needed, and departed. At length, in the last Crom- 
wellian persecution, when the religious were everywhere 
dispersed, the pious virgin, taking with her a little food, 
fled, with the companion already mentioned and one hand- 
maiden, to a certain island, (called Holy Island ;) here, 
however, she was followed by the enemies and taken pri- 
soner, spoiled of everything, and, though it was the depth 
of winter, stripped almost naked and led away, and the bar- 
barians flung her violently, although only skin and bone, 
and half-frozen, into a boat, like a log of wood, whereby 
three of her ribs were broken, and she died. Before, how- 
ever, she expired, the servant carried her to our church of 
Burishool, and laid her before the altar of the Blessed Vir- 
gin. Having left her there, the servant went to seek the 
other sister, whom she found in the wood, and when she 
returned to the church she found the body of Sister Hono- 
ria on her knees as if praying, she calmly sleeping in the 
Lord. 

" Sister Honoria Magaen, also a professed sister of our 

* Burishool, (in Irish, Buresuail— that is, the place of apples,) in the county Mayo. 



330 Martyrs and Confessors 

Third Order, and inseparable from Sister Honoria de Burgo, 
whose labors and troubles she shared, joined to her in life, 
in death too she was not divided, but shared her tomb and 
followed her to glory ; for she was taken prisoner by the 
same soldiers, in the same island of saints, and, in derision, 
all her clothes stripped off, and many torments inflicted on 
her. As she was younger, and, being fair, feared more for 
her chastity than her life, by the inspiration of the Holy 
Spirit she snatched herself from the hands of her furious 
persecutors, and escaped into the neighboring wood, where 
she hid herself in the trunk of a hollow tree, where the 
next day she was found by the servant of her friend Hono- 
ria, dead of cold, with her hands raised to heaven. She 
was buried with her friend in one tomb, and, as in life they 
had loved each other, in death they were not divided." 
— Mon. Dom. ex Act. Cap. Gen. 1656. 



Anno 1654. 

REV. FATHER HUGH MACGOILLY, O.P.P. 

In the year 1654, the shedding of Dominican blood con- 
tinued in Ireland. The Rev. Hugh MacGoilly, of the con- 
vent of Rathbran,* who for his piety and learning had been 
appointed master of the novices in that convent, urged by 
his zeal, proceeded to Waterford, to confirm the Catholics 
there in their veneration and reverence toward the Holy 
Roman Church, and its visible head the Pope. He was 
taken by the heretics, and, having freely confessed that he 
was a priest and a Dominican, was condemned to be hung. 
Standing under the gallows, he so movingly addressed the 
.bystanders that his very enemies were moved to tears. 

* Rathbran, in the barony of Tyrawly, county of Mayo. 



During the Commonwealth. 331 

The Catholics buried his venerable body with what honor 
they might. — Mon. Dom. ex Act. Cap. Gen. 1656. 



REV. JOHN CAROLAN AND CHRISTOPHER NETTERVILLE. 

Their fate is told in the manuscript given by Dr. Moran : 
" We lived for the most part in the mountains and for- 
ests, and often too in the midst of bogs, to escape the cav- 
alry of the heretics. One priest, advanced in years, Father 
John Carolan, was so diligently sought for, and so closely 
watched, being surrounded on all sides, and yet not dis- 
covered, that he died of starvation. Another, Father 
Christopher Netterville, like St. Athanasius, for an entire 
year and more, lay hid in his father's sepulchre, and even 
then, with difficulty escaping the pursuit of the enemy, he 
had to fly to a still more incommodious retreat. One was 
concealed in a deep pit, from which he at intervals went 
forth on some mission of charity. The heretics having re- 
ceived information as to his hiding-place, rushed to it, and, 
throwing down immense blocks of rock, exulted in his de- 
struction ; but Providence watched over the good father, 
and he was absent, engaged in some pious work of his min- 
istry, when his retreat was thus assailed. As the Holy 
Sacrifice cannot be offered up in these receptacles of beasts 
rather than of men, all the clergy carry with them a suffi- 
cient number of consecrated hosts, that thus they may 
themselves be comforted by this holy sacrament, and may 
be able to administer it to the sick and to others." — Stains 
Rei CatJi. i?i Hib. hoc anno 1654, ap. Moran, Persec. p. 120. 



REVS. ROGER BEGS, WILLIAM SHIEL, AND TOBIN. 

Of the first all we know is that on the 4th of August, 
1654, he was dismissed from prison, "on account of his 



33 2 Martyrs and Confessors 

miserable condition," after nine months' imprisonment ; 
but two conditions were added, namely, that within four 
months he should transport himself out of the country, and 
during that interval " should not exercise any part of his 
priestly functions." Another priest, named William Shiel, 
was also dismissed from prison, on account of his " being 
old, lame, and weak, and not able to travel without crutch- 
es ;" but two. conditions were also added to his release — 
that he should never exercise his priestly function, and 
should not move beyond one mile from the spot in Con- 
naught which would be assigned to him for residence by 
the governor of Athlone. Some idea of the condition of 
the priests in prison may be formed from the fact recorded- 
of Father. Tobin, of Kilkenny, that, though in a violent 
fever, he was obliged to sleep on the floor, and his only 
food was a small quantity of half-boiled beans. It was 
made a privilege to allow them to transport themselves to 
foreign parts, as appears from an order of 29th May, 1664 ; 
and then the clause was added that each should provide 
the five pounds which had been paid for his arrest. — Moran, 
Persec. p. 105 ; Prendergast, Cromwellian Settlement, p. 
159 ; Letter in S. C. de Prop. Fid. 14th March, 1656 



REV. BRYAN KILKENNY, O.S.F. 

I find the following notice of him in Curry : 
" A barbarous murder was committed by one Edward 
Alta, an irreligious, profane fellow, of the county of Mayo, 
and his accomplices, on some Protestants at Shruel, a place 
meeting Galway, on about thirty persons ; and the pam- 
phleteer might well remember that the neighboring gentry 
came with all expedition to rescue the said Protestants, and 
that they did rescue the Bishop of Killala, (who by the 
pamphlet would seem to have been murdered,) and his 



During the Commonwealth. 333 

wife and children, with most part of the said Protestants ; 
and Bryan Kilkenny, a friar, then guardian of the abbey of 
Ross, near Shruel, was of the first that made haste to that 
rescue, and brought the said bishop's wife and children, 
with several other of the distressed Protestants, to his 
monastery, where they found as much civility as was in 
the said friar's power to give them for several nights, until 
Mr. Burke, of Castle-Hacket, brought the said bishop, his 
wife and family, to his own house, where they wanted noth- 
ing he could afford them for several weeks ; the like being 
done by several other neighboring gentlemen to the rest 
of the said Protestants, until they were sent to places of 
security by the Lord Marquis of Clanricarde's order ; yet 
the said friar hath been these eight years past (written in 
1662) kept a prisoner for his function or calling, without 
any crime laid to his charge, being now above eighty years 
old. And it is observable that in this county of Galway, 
all the war-time, several Protestant ministers had their 
Protestant flocks and meetings without interruption, living 
among the Irish." — Extract of a collection of some of the 
massacres and murders committed on the Irish in Ireland 
since the 23d October, 1642. {London, 1662,) ap. Curry s 
Civil Wars, Appefidix, p. 623. 



REV. BERNARD CONNOR, O.S.F. 

" He was a distinguished Franciscan, and several times 
held the offices of guardian, defmitor, and once that of pro- 
vincial minister, of visitor-general, and guardian of the col- 
lege of St. Anthony at Louvain. Exemplary for piety, 
zeal, and eloquence, he was known to all the Catholics 
throughout the island. This innocent and exemplary 
man, when in his seventieth year, was seized by the rebels, 
alike against their God and their king, and was sent to the 



334 Martyrs and Confessors 

island of Inisbofin, some miles from the coast of Connaught, 
in the year 165 1. It is impossible to tell all he suffered in 
the wretched dungeon there, from the Calvinists, during 
two years. At length he was taken to Galway for execu- 
tion, but before the sentence was carried out he gave his 
soul to God in prison, in the year 1654." — Bruodin, lib. iv. 
cap. xv. 

Anno 1655. 

MOST REV. JOHN DE BURGO, ARCHBISHOP OF TUAM, 

Was consecrated Bishop of Clonfert in 1639, an< ^ transfer- 
red to Tuam in 1647. It is not necessary here to enter at 
any length on the part he took in the politics of the period ; 
he opposed the nuncio, and advocated the peace of 1646 ; 
but after the triumph of Cromwell all Catholics suffered 
alike. It appears from the Libellus Supplex, presented by 
Dr. French to Clement IX. in 1667, that Dr. Burke was 
arrested after the surrender of Galway in 1652, detained in 
prison for some time, and then sent into exile. He was 
arrested on the nth March, 1654, and detained in prison 
for fourteen months, having suffered so much in the mean 
time from a violent disease in the legs that he could 
scarcely move. In August, 1665, the convict ship sailed 
from Galway for the port of Nantes, with the Archbishop 
of Tuam, the Bishop of Killala, Dr. Kirwan, and many 
priests among the prisoners. 

In 1662, after the restoration of Charles, when hopes of 
toleration (how delusive, time soon proved) were entertained 
by the Catholics who had suffered so much for his family, 
Dr. Burke sailed directly from St. Malo, and landed in 
Dublin about October or November. To the reproaches of 
the emissaries of Ormond he answered that he had returned 
to die at home — " to lie down at rest in his grave and native 
soil." He had hoped to pass through Dublin unnoticed, 



During the Commonwealth. 335 

when the lord-lieutenant was absent, that his past loyalty 
had been proved ; for the future no pledge was necessary, 
and he asked permission to remain in Ireland "for so 
short a time as he had to drag on a miserable existence, 
and end it by a death more welcome, which he daily ex- 
pected." 

The next day the archbishop was removed in a litter on 
his way to Connaught, accompanied by two priests, both 
Jesuits, one his nephew, and the other Father Thomas Quin. 
He died in 1666, being above eighty years of age. — Rene- 
haiis Bishops. For life of Kirwan, LyncJis Alethinologia ; 
Walsh s Remonstrance, etc. 

REV. FATHER THOMAS BIRMINGHAM, O.P.P. 

" In this year the venerable servant of God, Father 
Thomas Birmingham, died in exile for the faith, in great 
reputation for sanctity. After the example of our early 
fathers, he was most assiduous in prayer, and a great 
mortifier of his body, which he often beat, even to blood. 
He watched and fasted much, and slept on a hard board. 
He, by prayer, obtained aid for the Catholics who were 
besieged in Naas. At length he was taken prisoner 
by the heretics, who thirsted for his blood. They stripped 
him of the habit of his order, and in derision clothed him 
in that of the Friars Minors, and among the insults and 
blows of the soldiers he was dragged to Dublin, where he 
long lay in prison, and was at length sentenced to be 
transported to Barbadoes. But a ranson* having been 
paid for him by the Lords Constantine and Felix O'Neill, 
and Hugh O'Rorke, he was sent to Spain, whence he pro- 
ceeded to Rome, and, having visited the most celebrated 
shrines in Italy, he ended his course, and departed to 
eternal life. — Mon. Dom. ex Act. Cap. Gen, 1656. 

* Those sent to Barbadoes were publicly sold. 



336 Martyrs and Confessors 

REV. FATHER DANIEL CREIDEGAIN, O.P.P. 

The same year died in his native country the venerable 
old man, Father Daniel Cnegan,* who with extraordinary 
zeal revived our order in Connaught when it was nearly 
extinct. He restored and built anew several convents, 
and gave the habit to many youths, whom he sent to be 
educated in other provinces of the order. Under King 
James this intrepid champion of the faith animated to 
constancy many noble men who were thrown into prison 
for their ancestral faith, and collected funds for their 
sustenance. He persuaded the illustrious Earl of West- 
meath to go to the king in England, to seek to mollify his 
anger against the Catholics, and assuage the rage of the 
heretics. He suffered much persecution, and once, having 
publicly exposed himself to preserve the honor of a noble 
Catholic matron assaulted by heretics, he received a fear- 
ful wound on the head, from which he nearly died, and 
lost his sight ; whereupon the heretical governor, on 
account of his well-known innocency of life, exempted him 
from the common sentence of exile, and allowed him to 
spend the remnant of his life amidst his friends. Here he 
labored assiduously in consoling the Catholics ; and, worn 
out with age and labors, he calmly slept in the Lord. — 

Mon. Dom. ut snpra. 

— ♦ — 

REV. FATHER DAVID ROCHE, O.P.P., AND OTHER 
PRIESTS. 

Of the many thousands of Irish men, women, and chil- 
dren who were sold into slavery in the West Indies, the 
names of very few have been preserved. Among these 
was Father David Roche,f Dominican. Full details of 
this infamous traffic are given by Prendergast, Cromwel- 

* Mon. Dom. gives his name as Cnegan ; Hib. Dom. as Creidegain. t Hib. Dom. p. 571. 



During the Commonwealth. 337 

lian Settlement. Thus, a government order, published 
on March 4th, 1655, states that in the four preceding years 
6400 Irish, men and women, boys and maidens, had been 
disposed of to the English slave-dealers. On the 14th 
September, 1653, two English merchants named Selleck 
and Leader, signed a contract with the government com- 
missioners, by which a supply was granted to them of 250 
women and 300 men of the Irish nation, to be found with- 
in twenty miles of Cork, Youghal, Kin sale, Waterford, and 
Wexford. Roger Boyle, Lord Broghill, (afterward Earl of 
Orrery,) deemed it unnecessary to take such trouble in 
visiting different parts of the kingdom, and undertook to 
supply the whole number from the county of Cork alone ; 
hence he received an order empowering him to search for 
and seize upon that number, " and no person, being once 
apprehended, was to be released but by special order in 
writing under the hand of Lord Broghill. In the month 
of November, 1655, all the Irish of the townland of Lac- 
kagh, county of Kildare, were seized on by the agents of the 
government. They were only forty-one in number, and 
of these four were hanged by sentence of court-martial ; 
the remaining thirty-seven, including two priests, were 
handed over to Mr. Norton, a Bristol merchant, to be sold 
as bond-slaves to the sugar-planters at the Barbadoes." 
Again, on the 8th December, 1655, we find a letter from 
the commissioners to the Governor of Barbadoes, "advis- 
ing him of the approach of a ship with a cargo of proprie- 
tors, deprived of their lands, and seized for not transplant- 
ing." They add that among them w r ere three priests, and 
the commissioners particularly desire that these may be 
so employed that they may not return again where that sort 
of people are able to do so much mischief, having so great 
an influence over the popish Irish. On the 4th January, 
1655, the sum of five pounds was paid for the arrest, on the 
27th November preceding, of " a priest, with his appurte- 



$$8 Martyrs and Confessors 

nances, in the house of one Owen Byrne, of Cool-ne-Kish- 
in, near old Leighlin, in the county Carlow, which said 
priest, together with Byrne, the man of the house, were 
brought prisoners to Dublin." On the 8th January, Rich- 
ard and Thomas Tinte, Edmund and George Barnewall, 
and William Fitzsimons, held the castle of Baltrasna, in 
the county Meath, in defence and rescue of a priest who 
had repaired thither to say Mass. For this they were 
arrested and their goods seized, and the soldiers claimed 
the booty, on the ground that the castle was defended 
against them, " with arms and ammunition, by those who 
maintained a priest in his idolatrous worship, in opposition 
to the declaration of the state in that behalf." — Hib. Dom. ; 
Moran, Persec. pp. 106, 151 ; Prendergast, Cromwellian Set- 
tlement, p. 159, etc. 



Anno 1656. 

REV. FATHER JOHN FLAVERTY, O.P.P. 

" He was prior of the convent of Coleraine, ana was 
stoned to death by the soldiers, and thrown into the river, 
and so gave his life for the faith in the Cromwellian perse- 
cution, about the year 1656." — Hib. Dom. p. 574 ; OHeyn, 
P- 4. 



REV. FATHER JAMES O'REILLY, O.P.P. 

" He belonged to the convent of Coleraine, and expired 
under the blows of the soldiers, about the year 1656. 
Another James O'Reilly, who belonged to the convent of 
Clonmel, suffered martyrdom in the year 1649, as I have 
mentioned before."— //z'£. Dom. p. 574; OHeyn, p. 4. 



During the Commonwealth. 339 



REV. FATHER NICHOLAS NUGENT, S.J. ; REV. PAUL CUSHIN; 
AND OTHERS. 

The only record of the first that I find is in Dr. Oliver, 
Collections, etc." He says, after an imprisonment in 
Dublin of four years, he died on the 2d of November in 
this year. Dr. Oliver refers to Synopsis Annalium Soc. J 
Jesu in Lusitania, auctore P. Ant. Franco, Aug. Vindelic, 
1726, pp. 466, but I have not been able to see this work. 

In this year the transporting of innocent Catholics to 
Barbadoes continued. In Scobell's Acts and Ordinan- 
ces there is an Act of Parliament, passed in 1656, which, 
after stating that "the children, grandchildren, brothers, 
nephews, uncles, and next pretended heirs of the persons 
attainted do remain in the provinces of Leinster, Ulster, 
and Munster, having little or no visible estates or subsist- 
ence," commands all such persons " to transplant or be 
transported to the English plantations in America." 

On the 3d of May, 1656, the governors of the various 
prisons received orders to convey their prisoners to Car- 
rickfergus, " to be there put on board such ship as should 
sail with the first opportunity for the Barbadoes." One 
aged priest, named Paul Cushin, was arrested at his mis- 
sion in Maryborough, and was among those then hurried 
off toward Carrickfergus. On the way he fell dangerously 
ill, at Philipstown, and a petition being sent in his name 
to the commissioners to be allowed to remain, they replied 
by an order of the 27th August, 1656, allowing him six- 
pence per day during his sickness, which munificent sum 
" was to be continued to him thence to Carrickfergus, in 
order to his transportation to the Barbadoes." 



34° Martyrs and Confessors 

Anno 1657. 

REV. FATHER JOHN O'LAIGHLIN, O.P.P. 

" He was Prior of Derry, and suffered a long imprison- 
ment and sore want. The heretics made him great offers 
if he would abandon the Catholic faith, but he chose rather 
death. His fellow-captives related that they had seen him 
in prayer raised up a cubit's height from the ground, and 
that he said that a glimpse of the glory to come had been 
granted to him, lest he should yield to the bitterness of 
torments. He was strangled in prison, and his head cut 
off, and thus received the crown of martyrdom, about the 
year 1657."* 



REV. JAMES FINAGHTY, REV. DONALD HAGERTY, REV. 
EDMUND DUIN, DANIEL CONNERY, GERALD DAVOCK 
O.P.P., AND REV. BERNARD MACGHIOLLA CLUINNE 
O.M., AND MANY OTHER PRIESTS AND LAYMEN. 

Of the Rev. James Finaghty, vicar-general of the diocese 
of Elphin, the following account is given in a visitation of 
the diocese made in 1668 : 

" Father James Finaghty suffered many tortures and 
cruel afflictions from the common enemy for the faith of 
Christ : five times he was arrested, and once he was tied to 
a horse's tail and dragged naked through the streets, and 
then cast into a horrid dungeon ; nevertheless, being again 
ransomed by a sum of money, he continues to labor un- 
tiringly and fearlessly in the vineyard of the Lord."f 

This year Mr. Prendergast gives us the following as in- 
stances of similar orders : " 10th August, £$, on the certi- 
ficate of Major Stanley, to Thomas Gregson, Evan Powel, 

* This evidently refers to the sentence for treason. 

t MS. Relatio Visitationis Dioc. Elphin., facta anno 1668, ab Edmundo Tiege, ap. Moran, 
Persec. p. 125. 



During the Commonwealth. 341 



"<b 



and Samuel Ally, being three soldiers of Colonel Abbott's 
regiment of dragoons, for the arrest of Donogh Hagerty, a 
popish priest, by them taken, and now secured in the 
county jail of Clonmel. To Arthur Spunner, Robert 
Pierce, and John Bruen, five pounds, for the good service 
by them performed in apprehending and bringing before 
the Chief-Justice Papys, on the 21st January, 1657, one 
Edmund Duin, a popish priest. On 13th April, 1657, t0 
Sergeant Humphrey Gibbs and Corporal Thomas Hill, ten 
pounds, for apprehending two popish priests, namely, Mau- 
rice Prendergast and Edmund Fahy, who were secured 
in the jail of Waterford, and, being afterward arraigned, 
were both of them adjudged to be and were accordingly 
transported into foreign parts."* 

The Archbishop of Tuam informs us that about this 
year the priests arrested ceased to be put to death, as 
formerly, in consequence of the remonstrances of the 
Catholic princes on the Continent ; but " they were trans- 
ported to the island of Inisbofin, in the diocese of Tuam, 
where they were compelled to subsist on herbs and 
water." Mr. Prendergast has published some further 
details connected with this new place of imprisonment. On 
the 27th February, 1657, the commissioners referred to 
his excellency to consider where the priests then in 
prison in Dublin should be most safely disposed of, and, in 
reply, an order was received to transport them "to the 
isles of Arran, lying out thirty miles in the Atlantic, 
opposite the entrance of the bay of Galway, and the isle 
of Inisbofin, off the coast of Connemara." 

In these storm-beaten islands they lived during the 
remaining years of the Commonwealth ; and from a 
Treasury warrant dated the 3d July, 1657, we learn 
that cabins were ordered to be built for them on these 

* Prendergast, CromweUian Settlement, pp. 153-158. 



342 Martyrs and Confessors 

islands, and that the Governor of Galway, Colonel Thomas 
Sadleir, was commissioned to allow them sixpence per 
diem for their support* A letter from a priest in Nantes, 
dated 19th October, 1659, a ^ so states that for some time 
past the Puritans had " resolved to put none of the clergy 
to death, and, instead of sending them into exile, to 
sentence them to perpetual imprisonment. This was 
partly because they envied us that incredible joy with 
which the priests went out to death, and partly because 
they thus hoped to cut off all chance of return to their 
flocks, and all possibility of administering spiritual assist- 
ance to the Catholics. Hence, out of fifty-two priests 
who were in custody, thirty-six were lately sent to the 
islands of Inisbofin and Arran, where lately there are 
heretical garrisons, and where they can neither offer up the 
Holy Sacrifice nor see the face of a single Catholic, and 
not even are they allowed to administer to each other the 
last rites of religion."! 

Among the priests sent to the island of Inisbofin about 
this time were two Dominican fathers, as we learn from 
the Hib. Do?n. p. 577: "The Very Rev. Father Gerald 
Davock, an alumnus of the convent of Athenry and master 
in theology, returned to Ireland after having studied in 
Spain. He was made reader in philosophy, and afterward 
master of studies. These offices he filled well, and preach- 
ed eloquently. When the religious were dispersed, he 
was taken by the heretics and, with many other priests, 
both secular and regular, sent to the island of Bofin, where 
he passed seven years in hunger and want with much 
patience. When King Charles II. was restored, (1660,) 
they were freed, except that great and venerable man 
F'ather Bernard MacGhiolla Cluinne, provincial of the 
Franciscans, who there died happily for the glory of God. 

* Prendergast, p. 162= t Ex Archiv. Soc. Jesu in Rome. 



During the Commonwealth. 343 

Rcund the loins of this heroic man was found when he 
died a leather girdle set with sharp iron points. Father 
Davock lived very religiously for many years after his 
liberation from that island, and labored by word and 
example in the vineyard of the Lord, until, in advanced age, 
borne down by the weight of the persecution which had 
then again sprung up, he died, fortified with the sacraments, 
in the year of our Lord 1675." 

Brennan, Eccl. Hist, of Ireland, vol. ii. p. 197, gives a 
list of the priests who in 1653, or rather 1657, were con- 
fined as prisoners in the island of Bofin or shut up in the 
jails of Cork and Galway : 

" Rev. James Fallen, V.G. ; Rev. Roger Commin, secular 
priest ; Rev. Gerald Davock, Dominican ; Rev. Brien 
Corny, Franciscan ; Rev. Thomas Bourke, Franciscan ; 
Rev. Philip Walsh, secular priest ; Rev. Thomas Grady, 
secular priest ; Rev. Timothy Mannin, secular priest ; 
Rev. Miles Tully, secular priest ; Rev. Patrick Trevor, 
secular priest ; Rev. John Kelly, secular priest ; Rev. 
McLeighlin Conry, secular priest ; Rev. Anthony Geoghe- 
gan, abbot ; Rev. John Dillon, Dominican ; Rev. Thomas 
McKernan, Franciscan ; Rev. Edward Delamar, secular 
priest ; Rev. Terlagh Gavan, secular priest ; Rev. John 
Russell, V.G. ; Rev. W. Henessy, secular priest ; Rev. 
William Farrell, secular priest ; Rev. Redmond Roche, 
secular priest ; Rev. Conner Keilly, secular priest ; Rev. 
Denis Horgan, secular priest ; Rev. Henry Burgat, Domi- 
nican ; Rev. Timothy Donovan, Franciscan ; Rev. Connor 
Hurly, Franciscan ; Rev. James Slevin, Rev. Thomas 
Roony, Rev. Connor Scanlan, Franciscans ; Rev. Bernard 
Comins, Dominican ; Rev. Bonaventure Dant, Rev. Tho- 
mas Burke, Rev. Francis Horan, Rev. Thomas McKernan, 
Rev. Terence Gavan, Rev. Hugh McKeon, secular priests. 
— Ex Libro Archivii Provincialis Collegii Lovanicnsis 
Sancti Antonii de Padua Fr. Min. Hibernornm. 



344 Martyrs ajid Confessors 



A.nno 1658. 



REVS. THOMAS MCKERNAN, TURLOGH O'GOWAN, HUGH MC- 
GEOWN, AND TURLOGH FITZSYMONS, AND OTHERS. 

That the persecution still continued we find from the 
entries of money paid for the arrest of priests. Thus, in 
November, 1658, "To Lieutenant Edward Wood, on the 
certificate of William St. George, Esq., J.P. of the county 
Cavan, twenty-five pounds for five priests and friars by 
him apprehended : namely, Thomas McKernan, Turlogh 
O'Gowan, Hugh McGeown, and Turlogh Fitzsymons, who, 
upon examination, confessed themselves to be both priests 
and friars." 

Father Richard Shelton, superior of the Jesuits in 
Ireland, writing to the Sacred Congregation on the. 29th 
April, 1658, conveyed the sad intelligence that the persecu- 
tion of Cromwell against the Irish Catholics was carried 
on with ever-increasing fury. Two of the Jesuit fathers 
had been lately arrested, and were treated with great 
cruelty ; especially, he adds, " every effort is now made to 
compel the Catholics, by exile, imprisonment, confiscation 
of goods, and other penalties, to take the sacrilegious oath 
of abjuration ; but all in vain, for as yet there has not 
been even one to take it, with the exception of a stranger 
residing in our island, who had acquired large possessions, 
and, being afraid of losing them, and at the same time 
being ashamed of the other Catholics, undertook a journey 
of more than two hundred miles to present himself to one 
of Cromwell's emissaries." 

Yet some idea may be formed of the zeal of the clergy in 
filling the gaps created in their ranks by imprisonment and 
transportation from the fact, mentioned by the Archbishop 
of Tuam in a letter written from Nantes in September, 
1658, that even then, while the persecution raged with its 
greatest violence, there were one hundred and fifty priests 



In the Reign of Charles II. 345 

in his province, and a like number in the other provinces, 
" attending to the care of souls, seeking refuge in the 
forests and in the caverns of the earth."* — See Moran, 
Persec. pp. 104, 123, 157. 



Anno 1664. 

REV. FATHERS CHRISTOPHER OTERRALL, JOHN O'HART, 
AND ARTHUR PANTI, O.P.P. 

The reader has seen how in the years from 1641 to 1660 
the persecution had nearly exterminated the Catholics, till 
the persecutors slackened rather from want of victims than 
from diminution of animosity. In 1641, according to Sir 
William Petty, the Catholics in Ireland were about 1,240,- 
000 ; in 1659, there were only 413,984 persons of Irish de- 
scent in Ireland, which therefore must have been the maxi- 
mum number of Catholics left, or, in other words, in these 
eight years 826,000 Irish Catholics had perished or been 
exiled or sold as slaves to the West Indies. 

In 1660, Charles II. was restored to the throne, and the 
persecution of Catholics was no longer so violent ; nor 
shall we, from this date, any longer meet with hecatombs 
of victims. But Ireland was still to furnish a few, and not 
the least illustrious, of her confessors and martyrs. Of 
these was Father Christopher O'Ferrall, the Dominican, 
of whom we find the following record : 

" He was a friar of the convent of Dublin, and studied at 
Louvain, whence he returned to Dublin, where he became 
prior, and was remarkable as a pious, diligent, and prudent 

* In 1659, there were in Connaugh 1 no Scotch, 7673 English, and79, 680 Irish, (the last may 
be taken as Catholics,) and 150 priests ; or Catholics to Protestants 10 to 1, and 1 priest to 
every 534 Catholics. In 1S61, there were 46,326 Protestants, 866.023 Catholics, and 40S 
priests ; or Catholics to Protestants nearly 18 to 1, and t priest to every 2165 Catholics. In 
1S64, the total number of priests in Ireland was 3097. The Catholic population of Ireland in 
1861 was 4,505,265. This would give a proportion of 1 priest to 1454 Catholics. — Census of 
1659, by Hardinge ; Census 0/1S61 ; and Catholic Directory, 1864. 



346 Martyrs and Confessors 

confessor. Together with the provincial, Father John 
O'Hart, he was thrown into prison in Dublin* for the de- 
fence of the authority of the pontiff, and lay there for full 
three years ; nor was he allowed any bed, but made to lie 
on the bare earth. He himself told me (O'Heyn) that his 
feet were often bitten by mice. He was most devoted to 
the Blessed Virgin. He died some years later than 1664. 
Father Arthur Panti, of the same convent of Dublin, was 
confined in Dublin for the same cause. Afterward he was 
procurator for Ireland, and died at Seville after 1664." — 
Hib. Dom. p. 575, and OHeyn, p. 7. 



Anno 1665. 

REV. FATHER RAYMUND MOORE, O.P.P. 

" The Very Rev. Father Raymund Moore, (O'Morradh,) 
of the convent of Dublin, was a distinguished theologian. 
He studied with distinction in Spain, and in the college at 
Lisbon, and returning thence to Dublin, immediately on 
his landing was thrown into prison, with the two priests 
mentioned under last year, and spent there three years, en- 
during the same sufferings ; but at the close of the third 
year this glorious, learned, and courageous man died for 
the honor and unity of the church under its visible, 
supreme, and infallible head. He was called in English 
Moore, but his name is purely Irish, for he was descended 
of the noble family of O'Morradh, who were formerly lords 
or dynasts of the whole of the county which is now called 
the Queen's County, (except the barony of Upper Ossory.) 
He died in prison in 1665." — Hib. Dom. p. 575, and OHeyn, 
p. 7. 

* It would appear from another entry that Father O'Hart was thrown into prison in 1660.— 
Hib. Dom. p. 523. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 347 

Anno 1666. 

MOST REV. EDMUND O'REILLY, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 

I give his life from Dr. Renehan's Collections. 

After the death of Dr. Hugh O'Reilly, the primatial 
chair remained vacant for more than one year, and was 
then filled by another clergyman of the same name, but of 
a different family. He had the misfortune to find in a 
personal, political, and religious enemy the only historian 
that has left any considerably detailed narrative of his life. 
He concurred in the excommunication of Father Peter 
Walsh, the Franciscan ; he manfully opposed the cringing 
sycophancy of that friar's politics, and set himself up as a 
wall of brass against his schismatical innovations, even at 
the peril of his life. It would be unreasonable to expect 
from so vindictive a writer as Walsh an impartial biography 
of so decided an opponent. But in following his authori- 
ty,* if many of the primate's qualities are suppressed, yet 
those which appear in the facts he relates, or shine through 
the ill-wrought veil of his clumsy slander, receive addition- 
al lustre and certainty. Indeed, it is no small eulogy of 
our primate that the tooth of even Walsh's revenge could 
find no point in his moral or religious character on which 
to fasten. 

The most Rev. Edmund O'Reilly was born in the diocese 
of Dublin, about the year 1606, and after having complet- 
ed a course of studies in philosophy, and a limited portion 
of theology, he was ordained priest, and after some little 
time appointed to the government of a parish in his native 
diocese.f It appears not improbable that he received his 
ecclesiastical education in the college established in Dame 
Street by the Catholics, and that the suppression of that 

* The work of Walsh from which the facts here recorded are principally taken is his History 
of the Irish Remonstrance. 

+ Walsh's Hist, of Remonstrance, p. 608. The y tar of his nativity is deduced only by 
inference from Columbanus. 



348 Martyrs and Confessors 

seminary by the government in 1629 was the cause of the 
abridgment of his theological studies. Whatever was the 
cause, he, at least, deeply regretted the effect, and anxious- 
ly awaited an opportunity of resigning his parish, and pro- 
ceeding to some foreign university, in order to extend his 
information, and qualify himself more perfectly for the dis- 
charge of his arduous duties. His archbishop, Dr. Flem- 
ing, saw that his strong natural talents deserved cultiva- 
tion ; for he was at this time, to use the words of Dr. O. 
Plunkett, " a man of a good mother-wit, but no extraordi- 
nary learning."* 

Obtaining at length his superior's permission, he repair- 
ed to the University of Louvain, about the year 1633 ;f 
and, residing in the Irish secular college, he devoted him- 
self for seven years with great assiduity to the study of the 
Sacred Scriptures and moral divinity under the Jesuits, 
and of canon law under the Franciscans. Here his piety 
and ecclesiastical decorum soon attracted the esteem of his 
superiors, who, after some time, convinced also of his pru- 
dence and zeal for collegiate discipline, appointed him pre- 
fect of the college of Irish secular ecclesiastics, wherein he 
resided. But he was honored in an especial manner by the 
affectionate friendship and confidential intimacy of the 
Hon. and Rev. Thomas Fleming, (the eldest son and heir 
of Lord Slane,) who, renouncing the pleasures of earth, 
had exchanged the titles and estates of this world for the 
cloister here, and the " hundredfold hereafter," and was 
now professor of divinity in the Franciscan college of St. 
Anthony of Padua, at Louvain. It was here also, and 
through this saintly professor, that Mr. O'Reilly became 
first acquainted with Peter Walsh, the Franciscan. But 
they were men of opposite dispositions, not likely to coa- 



* Jus Primatiale, p. 30. 

+ Columbanus's Hist. A ddress, p. 1. Walsh's Hist, of Rem. p. 608, says he was in 1636 

somewhat elderly." 



In the Reign of Charles II. 3 49 

lesce — the one, prefect of a college, and the confidant of the 
professors, but particularly of the pious Fleming ; the 
other, his refractory pupil — the one, a disciple of the Jesuits 
in those doctrines of grace and free-will which have since 
gained such support among all classes of Christians ; the 
other, a professed Jansenist, the confidant of Jansenius, to 
whom Walsh dedicated his philosophical theses, and whose 
famous AugtLstinns Walsh boasts of being the first to have 
read in albis as it came from the press.* In these circum- 
stances, an acquaintance between two such men would 
more naturally produce hostility than friendship. 

The Rev. Mr. O'Reilly returned to Ireland in 1641, 
bringing with him testimonial letters of the strongest de- 
scription from the university. But the Hon. and Rev. F. 
Fleming thought it his duty to write, moreover, privately to 
his uncle, the Archbishop of Dublin, and zealously recom- 
mended to his grace's esteem and protection the piety and 
abilities of his subject O'Reilly. He again zealously ap- 
plied himself to the laborious functions of a parish priest 
in the salvation of souls, andwa?s in a few months appoint- 
ed by Dr. Fleming vicar-general of the diocese. f The la- 
bor and responsibility of his new dignity were increased 
the forowing year, 1642, when the Archbishop of Dublin, 
being appointed a member of the supreme council, and fix- 
ing his residence on that account at Kilkenny, the admin- 
istration of the diocese, in spirituals and temporals, was 
confided entirely to the vicar-general O'Reilly from the 
year 1642 to 1648. 

In this latter year, he was deprived of his office of vicar- 
general, if we may credit Peter Walsh, who boasts of hav- 
ing been the principal instrument thereof himself. The 
matter appears to have happened thus : when Rinuccini 
and a portion of the clergy had complained that the coun- 

* Walsh's Hist, of Rem. treatise iv. p. 75. 

t Walsh, etc. Columbanus's Hist. Address, p. 14. 



350 Martyrs and Confessors 

cil of Kilkenny had grossly neglected the interests of reli- 
gion in the articles of cessation of arras with Inchiquin, 
and the nuncio had thereupon fulminated sentence of ex- 
communication for perjury against the council and their 
adherent, the Catholics became divided into two opposite 
parties, the majority of the clergy, the people, the province 
of Ulster, and the Milesian Irish generally, being on the 
one side ; the aristocracy, the dependents and expectants 
of the court, and the Anglo-Irish, on the other. The fa- 
mous Owen O'Neal espoused the nuncio's cause ; Dr. 
O'Reilly adhered to it also, and was believed to assist 
O'Neal by his counsel. The opposite party labored to di- 
minish the influence which O'Neal's military bravery and 
repeated victories had procured him with the people, feel- 
ing that their existence depended on their success in this 
point, and that while O'Neal continued unsuspected he 
would continue irresistible. In these circumstances, a let- 
ter was produced in the council, purporting to be written 
by O'Neal to Colonel Jones, the parliamentary general, 
and intercepted in its passage to him. Dr. O'Reilly's name 
was neither mentioned in nor signed to the letter. But 
P. Walsh contended it was in his handwriting. The Arch- 
bishop of Dublin was then lodging in the Franciscan con- 
vent of Kilkenny, "which, as well as the Dominican, ob- 
served the censures." Walsh resided in the Duke of Or- 
mond's castle, and from thence he sent the letter to the 
archbishop, with, of course, his own conclusions thereon, 
and an appropriate commentary. The consequence was 
that Dr. Fleming, either believing, as Walsh says, " it to be 
Edmund's handwriting," or, what his subsequent conduct 
proves more probable, deeming it prudent to yield for a 
moment to the storm, in order to avoid odious imputations 
himself, and appease his vicar's enemies, withdrew his com- 
missions from Dr. O'Reilly, and appointed Dr. Laurence 
Archibald, P.P., of Maynooth, vicar-general in his place. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 351 

The malignity of his enemies was not, however, yet sat- 
isfied. The following year he was waylaid in the neigh- 
borhood of Dublin, on his return to his own house, by an 
armed party, " with one Scurtog at their head, and narrow- 
ly escaped assassination."* 

In the beginning of the year 1650, Archbishop Fleming 
restored him to the office of vicar-general, thereby declar- 
ing solemnly his utter disbelief of the imputations which 
pensioned calumniators had fastened on his character. 
These slanders did not assail his moral, but his political 
conduct ; they were even then put forth only as the " whis- 
perings" of Ormond, or mere "hearsay reports," without 
pretending to a particle of evidence, and doubted by their 
very publishers. If O'Reilly had acted disloyally in the 
affairs of Wicklow Castle, the camp at Baggotsrath, etc., 
Ormond and his other enemies wanted neither the power 
nor the will to punish him on the scaffold on which they 
had murdered many other clergymen of acknowledged in- 
nocence. And it is clear that if such serious charges were 
but partially believed, or even reported, beyond the pur- 
lieus of courtly corruption, Dr. O'Reilly would not, in such 
times, have been subsequently appointed Vicar-General of 
Dublin or Primate of Armagh. 

After his reestablishment as vicar-general he persevered 
in the undisguised profession of the principles for which 
he had been persecuted. While assisting at the synod of 
Leinster, held in the woods of Glenmalure, in the county 
Wicklow, he gave a noble specimen of the apostolic virtue 
of overcoming evil with good. Peter Walsh had been ex- 
communicated by the synod, and denounced for errors in 
doctrine, schism, and other crimes. Colonel Luke O'Toole, 
understanding that he was lurking in these very woods, 
prepared a party of horse and foot, to pursue a man whom 
he considered a spy upon the Catholics, and the fomenter 

* Walsh's Hist. p. 609. 



352 Martyrs and Confessors 

of their dissensions, a rebel to the church, and a traitor to 
his country. Dr. O'Reilly, having learned his design, gen- 
erously forgot past injuries, exerted every means of chang- 
ing Lis purpose, and ceased not to reason, to importune, 
and entreat till he obtained a promise. " He it was," says 
the ungrateful Walsh,* " who alone dissuaded Colonel 
Luke O'Toole from his design, and thus saved my life." 
The following year, (1653,) Dr. O'Reilly was himself appre- 
hended as a popish priest ; for, having been summoned as 
a witness to one of the courts in Dublin, one of the par- 
ties, feeling that his cause would be injured by his testi- 
mony, cried out to the judge, as soon as he ascended the 
table, to seize him, for that he was Edmund O'Reilly, the 
popish vicar-general. Immediately he was seized and 
dragged to prison, where he was loaded with chains, and 
suffered with great fortitude the most shocking privations. 
After several months' incarceration, the intrepid confessor 
— " no other cause of guilt being found in him " except his 
religion — was driven into banishment, by virtue of a pro- 
clamation of the Cromwellian government, dated the pre- 
ceding feast of the Epiphany, which commanded all priests, 
bishops, etc., to quit the kingdom within twenty days, un- 
der pain of high treason. f Dr. O'Reilly fled to the Irish 
College of Lisle, in Flanders, and it was there he received 
notice that the pope, in approbation of his virtues and con- 
stancy, had appointed him to the primatial see of Armagh. 
I have not met with the precise date of this promotion, 
but think it must have been toward the end of 1654, for he 
did not leave Ireland till near the end of 1653,$ and Pope 
Innocent X., by whom, Primates McMahon § and Talbot || 
inform us, the appointment was made, died on the 7th 

* Hist, of Rein. p. 609. t Hib. Dominicana, pp. 704, 705. 

% Walsh says he was seized in 1653, (the beginning of which he counts from the 25th March,) 
hurried to prison, suffered much, and was at length either banished or licensed to depart to 
Flanders. 

§ M orison, Thren. p. 12 ; Jus Prim. Armacanum, p. 190. II Prim. Dublin, p. 59. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 353 

January, 1655. Knowing that the Irish colleges in Flan- 
ders were beset with English spies, and feeling how much 
his future safety would be endangered by there being any 
legal proof of his consecration, Dr. O'Reilly departed pri- 
vately for Brussels, and was there consecrated, in the ves- 
try of the Jesuit chapel, with the utmost secrecy. 

At this time the Catholic Church of Ireland was reduced 
to a most deplorable condition. " Neither the Israelites," 
says Morison, " were more cruelly persecuted by Pharaoh 
nor the infants by Herod, nor the Christians by Nero, 
Diocletian, or any other pagan tyrant, than were the 
Roman Catholics of Ireland at that juncture." Never did 
the host of hell put forth half such violence, even in Ire- 
land ; never did any religion, in any country, survive so 
bloody a persecution, or withstand such infernal machine- 
ry, as were then levelled against the Irish Church. The 
clergy of every grade and order were driven by the law 
into perpetual banishment ; and if they dared to remain in 
the kingdom, or return to it again, after the 1st February, 
1653, they were condemned to be hanged till half-dead, 
then cut down alive and beheaded, their heads put upon 
poles on the highways, and their hearts and entrails pub- 
licly burned. A price was set upon their heads, (it was 
the price of a wolf's,) and the money was paid when the 
bloody evidence of the murder was delivered. It was then 
high treason for a Catholic priest to breathe within the 
realms, as Lord Mansfield expressed himself when ex- 
pounding the boasted English law a century afterward.* 
To harbor a priest, to speak to him, not to betray him, nay, 
to exercise, no matter how privately, the Catholic religion, 
were each a capital crime, for which the laity were to be 
punished with death and total confiscation of property.! 



* See his speech on the trial of Mr. Webb, June, 1768, in the Life cf Right Rev. Dr. 
Ckalloner, p. 145. 
t Hib. Dom. p. 607 ; Carte, vol. ii. ; Leland, vol. ii. ; McGeoghegan. 



354 Martyrs and Confessors 

By these, and many other such hellish laws, and the still 
more diabolical machinery that was invented to enforce 
them, the churches were widowed of their bishops, 
the people deprived of comfort, instruction, and sacra- 
ments, and religion so nearly extirpated from the island 
that the despairing tongue faltered while it said, " If God 
be with us, who can prevail against us ?" " There is no 
counsel against the Lord." 

In 1649, and for some years before, the Irish hierarchy 
was in a much more flourishing condition than at any pe- 
riod since the English schism. The sees were all filled 
up, except Derry and Kildare ; the parishes were supplied 
with zealous and learned pastors ; the convents were re- 
established, and their crowded choirs poured forth in un- 
ceasing peals the canticle of praise and benediction to the 
Lord. The prelacy consisted of four archbishops and 
twenty-three suffragans, namely, eight in the province of 
Armagh, and as many more in Cashel, three in Dublin, and 
four in Connaught.* All of these resided in their dioceses 
with undisturbed security, and publicly performed the 
rites of religion ; many enjoyed the cathedrals, and lands 
with which their Catholic ancestors endowed the sees, for 
the support of Catholic bishops. The parochial churches 
and glebes were restored to the Catholic clergy ; the male 
and female religious recovered their convents, and a rem- 
nant of their ancient inheritance ; and the peace of 1648 
with Ormond and the king stipulated that the Catholic 
Church should permanently enjoy at least what it then 
possessed.! Such was the state of the church in 1649. 
The Catholic religion was not only what it always con- 
tinued, the religion of the nation, but also what it, on that 
account, ought ever to have been, the national, the estab- 



* MS. Memoir of the State of the Irish Church, written in i66j,pems me, Dr. French, in 
Hib. Dom. p. 499. 
t Philopattr, lib. i. p. 165 ; Hib. Dom. p. 68b. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 355 

lished religion. But how reversed was the scene in 1654, 
when Dr. O'Reilly was consecrated ! Three of the bish- 
ops, and more than three hundred of the clergy, had al- 
ready been put to death for the faith. All the surviving 
bishops but one, and upward of one thousand priests, 
were banished for ever from their country ; some were al- 
lowed to seek exile in the kingdoms of Europe, but many 
hundreds were stowed in crazy ships, treated with igno- 
minious cruelty, and transported to Barbadoes and other 
isles of the West Indies.* The friars were expelled from 
their convents and obliged to fly ; of six hundred Domini- 
cans scarcely one remained ;f the more numerous Fran- 
ciscans, the Augustinians, etc., were also gone ; nay, even 
the nuns were turned out into the woods or banished to 
some distant land. But one bishop remained,:]: and he 
was old, decrepit, and bedridden, and to his inability alone 
to discharge any episcopal functions he owed the privilege 
of dying in the land of his fathers. There remained also 
a portion of the parochial clergy, who, whenever their 
functions were to be exercised, nobly braved the axe and 
gibbet, and who, when the sinner was reconciled to God, 
or the departing soul prepared for heaven, sought a hiding- 
place in the forest, and sheltered themselves in caverns 
and morasses from the blood-scent of spies and priest- 
catchers. They did not, however, always escape. Even 
after the restoration of Charles II., when persecution 
relaxed its fury, not less than one hundred and twenty of 
these heroic confessors were sometimes crowded into the 
same loathsome jail, to pine away and starve together.§ 
In this state did things continue till 1661, and with very 
little variation till 1669. The old Bishop of Kilmore still 
continued to struggle in the arms of death ; the Archbish- 



* MS. Memoir of the Irish Church, Hib. Dom. t Hib. Dom. pp. 525, 116, etc 

X MS. Mem. ; Walsh's Hist, of Rem., passim. 

§ Fasti DuMi?ienses, in Whitelaw and Walsh's Hist. Dub. voL L 



356 Martyrs and Confessors 

op of Tuam returned in 1662, to die along with him, be- 
ing then eighty years of age, and disabled by repeated at- 
tacks of paralysis. The provinces of Leinster and Munster 
were totally bereft of their bishops for sixteen years, and, 
Munster like Conn aught, had each, for the latter half of 
the time, but one prelate surviving, even in banishment. 
From 1652 to the year 1655 neither the sacrament of con- 
firmation nor of holy orders was conferred in Ireland, yet 
there were in the latter year about n 00 secular priests on 
the Irish mission ;* but, the Bishop of Ardagh having re- 
turned in 1665, the number of priests was doubled in the 
course of six or seven years, although until the year 1669, 
the period of Dr. O'Reilly's death, the Irish prelacy could 
only count three bishops in Ireland, and three in involun- 
tary exile. 

Violent as was the fury of the Cromwellian persecution, 
its terrors did not frighten the new primate from visiting 
his desolated flock. But the difficulty was, how to make 
good his journey to Ireland without being discovered. 
A favorable opportunity was for some time waited for ; 
but none occurring, he set out from Brussels for Lisle, 
and, making there no long delay, came from Lisle to 
Calais. Here he was introduced by the exiled Bishop of 
Dromore to Cardinal Mazarin, the French minister, who 
gave him some pecuniary aid, and procured him a safe voyage 
to London,- where he arrived in 1658. But although the 
cardinal strongly recommended him to several noblemen 
of the highest influence, and entreated for him the pro- 
tection of the English ministers, yet he was obliged to 
conceal himself in cells and garrets ; and it was in one of 
these retreats that he said Mass and administered con- 
firmation and the other sacraments to a multitude of Irish- 
men then in London, having previously obtained the 
necessary permission of the English archpriest, Dr. Knight- 

* Walsh's Hist. Rem. pp. 574, 575, etc. ; also the MS. Memoir cited before. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 357 

ley.* After about six weeks' stay in London, he met the 
schismatical friar P. Walsh. The primate, supposing that 
he had no longer any motive for persevering in his 
obstinacy, exerted all his zeal to effect his conversion, and 
promised to absolve him from the excommunications he had 
incurred as soon as he should repent. His exhortations 
on this subject were frequently repeated, and always with 
great unction, condescension, and mildness. The result 
was, that, besides whatever occurred in the sacred tribunal, 
the primate publicly restored him to the communion of 
the church, Walsh " kneeling before the altar in his own 
house" while the primate pronounced the solemn words 
of absolution over him. Such is the account given of this 
transaction by Walsh himself, f But after the return of 
his master Ormond to power, on the exile of Dr. O'Reilly, 
he relapsed again, and even boasted that he had never 
repented, and* that the absolution, given as above, was in 
spite of him. This clumsy and slanderous fabrication 
was, however, believed by no person, and was indignantly 
denied by the primate himself. Walsh's general reputation 
for intrigue and fabrication left but little credibility to his 
story. The interest that he had in convincing Ormond 
and his party that he had not in their absence changed 
his principles, on the other hand Dr. O'Reilly's character 
for veracity and straightforwardness, the extreme impro- 
bability that he would, without any possible inducement, 
so grossly profane his spiritual powers or select Walsh's 
own house for forcibly absolving him, while Walsh remain- 
ed patiently and piously " on his knees before the altar" — 
in a word, every circumstance of intrinsic or extrinsic 
evidence convicted the fabricated tale of absurdity and 
falsehood. 

At all events, Dr. O'Reilly soon felt to his cost that Walsh 
had not more influence formerly with the ministers of 

* Walsh, etc. pp. 609, 610. t Ibid. 



35.8 Martyrs and Confessors 

the king in Ireland than he had now with his murderers 
in England, and that the only return he had to receive for 
his trouble was the exertion of that influence in depriving 
him of his friends and procuring his banishment. He had 
been accompanied to London by two priests, whom Walsh 
calls Father T. T. and Father N. B., initials which I am 
unable at present to decipher. These worthy men " were 
told," and, not knowing their informant's character, were 
made to believe, that the Primate had slighted both, and 
deceived one of them in a matter of grave importance. 
The consequence was a silent dissatisfaction and an almost 
total separation. Soon after, however, the bishop having 
learned, by some accident, the cause of discontent, and an 
explanation having been obtained, he at once fully con- 
vinced them that the supposed recommendations to the 
Holy See had never been made, and that the story was, 
as Walsh confesses and the event proved, totally with- 
out foundation. Finding that they had been malicious- 
ly imposed upon, the primate and his companions became 
grievously dissatisfied, and " quarrelled with Walsh" — no 
obscure indication that he was the incendiary between 
them. But he soon took ample revenge. While the pri- 
mate and his friends were preparing to continue their journey 
to Ireland, and their minds filled with dreams of success, 
Walsh was whispering in the court of Cromwell, and at 
length obtained an order from the minister of state for their 
banishment. " They were all three," he says, " ordered on 
a sudden, when they least expected it, to quit the country 
for France instanter." Who could expect that he who 
confesses himself the sole author* of this persecution by 
his Macchiavellian intrigue with the minister, should in the 
same page charge O'Reilly with being the friend of Crom- 
well and the enemy of Cromwell's rival? While the 
tyrant reigned, Walsh represented O'Reilly as the friend, 

* Walsh's Hist. o/Remons. p. 610. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 359 

the spy, or emissary of the king ; when the king was 
restored to power, he, to cover his own treason and gratify 
personal enmity, represented him as the ardent, inveterate 
advocate of the deceased tyrant. 

Dr. O'Reilly was obliged to fly to France, but soon after- 
ward his increasing zeal made out an opportunity of 
effecting his long wished for visit to Ireland. He sailed 
directly from France, and, notwithstanding the penal laws 
and his personal proscription, arrived safely in his province 
of Armagh in the year 1659. Here he labored with great 
zeal and effect for a year and a half, and, travelling in 
disguise under a fictitious name and character, he visited 
every part of the province, and almost of the kingdom, 
instructing, reforming, and consoling his afflicted flock, 
and administering the sacraments which required episcopal 
power. About the beginning of 1660 "some person," 
says Walsh,* (who, most probably, was himself that 
person,) wrote secretly to the English court of Charles II., 
then in the Low Countries, representing Dr. O'Reilly as 
advocating the interests of Cromwell, and animating the 
Protestants of Ireland to oppose the restoration of Charles 
II., promising them the full cooperation of the Irish 
Catholics to that effect. Impudently false as this absurd 
fabrication would have appeared if known in Ireland, it 
was believed in Holland by a prince accustomed to be 
duped ; and on this occasion, having no means of detecting 
the imposture, Don Stephano de Gamarro, the Spanish 
ambassador to the Dutch court, was solicited to complain 
to the pope on the subject, and to request his holiness, in 
the king's name, to order the primate to withdraw from 
Ireland. The application was made immediately before 
the king left Holland for England ; the requested order 
was received in England the following autumn.f 

* Walsh's Hist. Remons. p. 610. 

t Walsh's Hist. Remons. p. 611 ; Dr. Plunket's Jus Primatiale, p. 31 ; MS, ut supra. 



360 Martyrs and Confessors 

In the meantime, Dr. O'Reilly, who knew nothing of the 
storm excited, and now ready to burst upon him, was 
laboring in the ministry, exulting with joy, as were all his 
people, at the restoration of the king, for whose cause 
they had suffered, and expecting every day that the ex- 
cessive loyalty which made them fight for Charles, even 
for four years after every other part of the empire had 
submitted to Cromwell, as it had provoked the usurper's 
greater severity, so would now be rewarded with propor- 
tionate favor. An address of loyalty and congratulation 
was prepared, and, Walsh being selected, as a clever, 
insinuating politician, and a man who had friends at 
court, to present the address and manage other matters for 
the Catholic body, the unsuspecting primate signed the 
document appointing him the Catholic proxy or proctor. 
The imperative command of Pope Alexander VII. to the 
primate had been, some time before this, sent over to 
Walsh from the English court, a fact which, connected 
with several other circumstances, leaves no doubt that it 
was he who originally suggested it. No sooner, there- 
fore, did he receive Dr. O'Reilly's signature to the deed 
of procuration than he sent back to him, with characteristic 
gratitude, the decree for his expatriation. In vain did the 
archbishop solemnly deny the charge, in vain did he 
appeal to the testimony of all who knew him, and to public 
notoriety. He was compelled a third time to quit his 
country. After arriving in France he again wrote from 
Rouen to Walsh, beseeching him to efface the slanderous 
impression made on the minds of the ministers, and 
multiplying the protestations of his innocence, which 
were as unnecessary as they were fruitless.* He then 
went to Rome, and remained there till 1665, when he 
returned back to France, again wrote to Walsh, and on 

* " Wait there for three years," was the answer his grace received from the impudent, 
luxurious friar. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 361 

August 31st to the Lord-Lieutenant Ormond, soliciting 
permission to return to his diocese. Walsh was at this 
time moving heaven and earth to induce the clergy to 
adopt his famous " Remonstrance." Ormond also pressed 
its subscription, not, it was believed, because he attached 
any importance to it, but because he considered it a 
suitable wedge for splitting the compact Catholic body 
into parties and fragments.* Since, however, it had been 
condemned by some foreign universities, and was generally 
rejected as heretical, or at least schismatical, by the Irish 
clergy — since also it had been subscribed from 1661 only 
by one bishop, now no more, and sixty-nine priests, fifty- 
tour of whom were friars — it was deemed a matter of the 
utmost importance to the views both of Ormond and his 
pensioner to enlist the support and influence of the 
primate in its favor. A national synod of the clergy was 
summoned to meet in Dublin, June nth, 1666, and letters 
were despatched to Dr. O'Reilly, about the March or April 
preceding, inviting him to attend. England was at this 
time at war with France and Holland ; but the perils of 
the journey could not shake the fortitude of the archbishop. 
The safest route appeared to be through Flanders. But 
the Internuncio Rospigliosi, learning his determination, 
and knowing the temptations that would beset him in 
Dublin, wrote to dissuade him from continuing his journey, 
lest he should countenance the " Valesian formulary," 
So important indeed did the nuncio deem this point that 
he wrote also to Martin, Bishop of Ypres, enclosing a 
copy of the letter, and requesting him to make out 
O'Reilly and deliver the enclosure to him. The primate 
received these letters, but yet delayed not a moment. He 
passed from Flanders to London, and thence through 

* Ormond himself explains his motive and object in a letter to his son, Lord Arran, dated 
December 29th, 1680. "My aim," says he, "was to work a division among the Romish 
clergy, and I believe I had compassed it, to the great security of the government and the 
Protestants " — See Carte* vol. iii. ; Plowden, vol i. p. 34. 



362 Martyrs and Confessors 

Chester to Dublin, where he arrived on the 12th June, 
1666, being the second day of the national congregation. 
The English lord-chancellor had already learned his 
arrival in England, and immediately despatched an express 
to Ormond, informing him that O'Reilly was travelling 
incognito to Ireland, and directing his excellency to secure 
his apprehension. It is worthy of remark, as illustrative 
of the vigilant espionage then practised over the Catholic 
clergy, that this despatch was brought to Ireland by the 
very same packet in which O'Reilly travelled.* The 
situation in which the primate now stood was of a 
peculiarly trying character. On perusing the declaration 
of principles and allegiance called the " Remonstrance," 
proposed for their own purposes by Ormond, through his 
creature Walsh, he found it so captious and ambiguous in 
expression, and in sentiment so temerarious and so nearly 
resembling heresy, that he could not conscientiously support 
it: It pledged its subscribers to swear to speculative 
opinions which were uncertain if not false, and if not 
erroneous, at least not commonly adopted ; it encroached 
on the prerogatives of the Universal Church in defining 
articles of faith ; and its object, he thought, was dissension, 
and its tendency schism. On the other hand, he knew 
very well his temporal happiness, his liberty, nay, perhaps 
his life, depended on its adoption. 

But Dr. O'Reilly was not "a reed shaken by the wind," 
he was not a " man clothed in soft garments," nor versed 
in that finesse and pliancy which prevail in the "palaces 
of kings ;" he knew not how to temporize, but he knew how 
to contend and "suffer for justice' sake." At once, there- 
fore, he boldly opposed in the congregation the " Valesian 
Remonstrance," but at the same time supported warmly 
another declaration which fully expressed the strongest 
allegiance, emphatically renounced the objectionable doc- 

* Walsh's Hist. etc. p. 612. 



In the Reign of Charles II 363 

trines imputed to Catholics, but abstained from pronounc- 
ing on dubious and disputed opinions which had no con- 
nection with their political relation to the king, or their 
civil relation to their Protestant fellow-subjects, such as 
the superiority of councils over the pope, etc. 

His support of the latter, however, gave as much offence 
to the court as his rejection of the former formulary. 
Walsh fled to the castle and complained to Ormond that 
very night, as he tells us himself. O'Reilly was summoned 
to the castle before the lord-lieutenant. Here all the 
artifices of that crafty and intriguing statesman were ex- 
hausted in endeavoring to seduce O'Reilly, or at least si- 
lence his opposition. In an address of considerable inge- 
nuity he at first sharply rebuked the primate, then threw 
before his imagination vague insinuations about secret ac- 
cusations, grievous offences against the state privately in- 
formed of, and terrific innuendoes about their punishment ; 
bid him, however, to speculate upon the favor, and to merit 
by loyal compliance the gracious bounty, of the crown, but 
again reminded him of the power of the government, and 
the rigorous severity of the laws, in case he should persist 
in undutiful opposition. But the primate's conscience re- 
proached him with no offence that merited punishment ; 
and as to the sham plots and unjust persecution then so 
prevalent, he dreaded them as little as he courted the cor- 
rupting bounty of the crown. He therefore returned the 
day after to the national congregation, and firmly resisted 
every attempt to corrupt the faith or discipline of the Irish 
Church. 

The national congregation, after having unanimously re- 
jected the Valesian Remonstrance, was dissolved on Mon- 
day, the 25 th of June, 1666 ; and on that very day the 
Duke of Ormond gave an order from the castle for arrest- 
ing all the bishops that had attended its sessions. The 
prelates had all been invited and pressed to this assembly 



364 Martyrs and Confessors 

by Ormond himself; they had refused to come to Dublin, 
on account of the penal laws and the consequent danger to 
their liberty and lives, and they persisted in this determi- 
nation until Ormond, as lord-lieutenant, gave them a 
passport, and pledged himself in writing that they should 
enjoy perfect security and liberty in coming to Dublin, in 
their deliberations there, and in returning therefrom. The 
Bishop of Kilfenora, placing no great reliance on the vera- 
city or justice of Ormond, privately fled from the city the 
very moment the synod was dissolved, and thus escaped 
the execution of the order. The other prelates, who had 
formed a higher estimate of hfs honor or had less know- 
ledge of his character, remained in town, and were laid 
under arrest that very evening.* 

It was, however, deemed advisable to find some pretext 
for this nefarious violation of public faith. Ormond at first 
pretended that it was done only with the view of detaining 
them in town till he should be at leisure to rebuke them 
for their undutiful proceedings ; yet the primate remained 
three months! a prisoner, and Ormond never once spoke 
to him. This pretext being published, every effort was 
made to find some ground of accusation against O'Reilly. 
Being allowed to live at his own lodgings, and walk within 
the confines of the city, several attempts were made by, it 
would appear, hireling spies to cajole him outside the limits 
into the adjacent fields ; but the primate, knowing that his 
doing so would be construed into a breach of imprison- 
ment, always avoided the snare. This scheme having 
failed, a plot that would disgrace Macchiavelli was hatched, 
with the view of forcing him to fly, from the terror of an 
ignominious death, into voluntary banishment. 

The story throws too much light on the character of 

* Walsh's Hist. etc. p. 744. 

t From 25th June to 27th September. Walsh says it was but a few weeks, and insinuates 
that it was not more than four or five ; but the date of his arrest is attested by Walsh himself, 
and the date of his banishment by Ware, Whitelaw, and Walsh's Fasti Dub. , Carte, etc. 



In the Reign of Charles II 365 

Ormond and his creatures to be omitted, besides that 
it amply refutes the calumnious imputations charged on 
O'Reilly's character after his death. Peter Walsh, the 
chief of these calumniators, relying on the credulity of 
his readers, gravely relates the transaction substantially as 
follows : 

When Dr. O'Reilly had been about a fortnight under 
arrest, and, confident of his own innocence, did not avail 
himself of the opportunities offered him of effecting his 
escape, the Duke of Ormond called Walsh aside one day, 
and told him that he had a charge against O'Reilly, of 
which Walsh had as yet heard nothing. His grace then 
directed the secretary, Sir George Lane, to read for Walsh 
a part of a certain letter. Accordingly, Sir George pulled 
out the letter, and " read for me how Lord Sandwich, the 
British ambassador in Spain, informed thence that, as he 
passed through Gallicia to Madrid, Nicholas French, of 
Ferns, told him that Edmund O'Reilly had started privately 
from France for Ireland, with the design and set purpose 
of raising a rebellion in Ireland. The words I remember 
not, neither do I know, nor did I inquire, from whom the 
said letter was, or whether it was Sandwich's own letter or 
the secretary's at London, or any other's." Strange as 
Walsh's ignorance and incurious indifference may appear, 
considering the importance of the charge and the part he 
was to act, stranger still is the conduct pursued toward the 
detected traitor and rebel. Ormond commanded Walsh to 
inform O'Reilly that his rebellious conspiracy was dis- 
covered, and the channel through which the information 
came, and that, in consequence, he must be immediately 
put under a guard of soldiers. Still the primate was allow- $ 
ed to go where he wished, but yet he did not fly ; and it 
was not till the second or third day after he had received 
this secret intelligence from his pretended friend at the 
castle that the soldiers appeared. Their vigilance, how- 



366 Martyrs and Confessors 

ever, was not very excessive. He was permitted to go 
from room to room, and to the garden ; his friends were 
allowed to visit him at all times, and in any numbers ; and 
crowds frequented his chambers to hear Mass daily and 
receive the sacraments ; every facility was afforded, yet he 
made no attempt to escape. The public guard of soldiers 
was continued for several weeks, till it was supposed that 
the city must be sufficiently convinced that O'Reilly must 
be charged with some grievous offence. In the meantime 
Ormond went off to Kilkenny, leaving his orders to the 
privy council ; his absence might tend to relieve him from 
the odium of the iniquitous persecution which would appear 
to emanate only from the council, and at all events would 
secure him from any inconvenient inquiry about the accu- 
sation, or the authority on which it rested. At length the 
privy council ordered the prisoner O'Reilly to be brought 
before them. Who would not suppose that this unfortu- 
nate man, to whom so many crimes and treasons had been 
imputed by the pensioners of government, would now be 
satisfactorily convicted and punished for some of them ? 
But no, the council instituted no trial ; nay, says Walsh, 
they charged him with no offence whatever ; but, in the 
true spirit of persecution and despotic tyranny, they told 
him simply they had orders to banish him from Ireland, 
and he might select the place of his exile. On the 27th 
September, 1666* he was sent off to London under the 
custody of the City-Major Stanley, and thence was sent, 
without trial or accusation, to Dover, where he took ship- 
ping for Calais. 

Thus banished for ever from his diocese and his country, 
he studied how he might best provide for the interests of 
religion and the spiritual instruction of his people. His 
first care was to revisit the Irish colleges in Belgium. He 

* Fasti Dublinenses, in Whitelaw's Hist, of Dublin ; Ware's Gesta Hibernorum, etc., ut 
svpra. 



In the Reign of Charles II 367 

passed, therefore, from Calais to Louvain,* and thence to 
the other seminaries, and in the beginning of 1667 reached 
Brussels, where he ordained several priests for the Irish 
mission.f 

He then directed his attention to the Irish colleges in 
France. He came to Paris in the summer of 1667,$ and, 
making that city his principal place of residence, he 
occasionally journeyed, at a very advanced age, to the 
different Irish seminaries throughout the country. In 
these he exhorted and instructed the young candidates 
for the ministry, and held several ordinations, the last of 
which I find any mention took place at Paris, in January, 
1669. It was probably the excessive fatigue of one of 
these visits of pastoral zeal that abridged the term of 
his pilgrimage here, and hastened the reward of his 
manifold virtues. The expatriated confessor was seized 
with his last sickness at Saumur, in France, on the Loire, 
and there, with great sentiments of piety, he resigned his 
heroic soul into the hands of his Creator, about the spring 
of the year i66cj.§ 

Anno 1671. 

MOST REV. DR. JAMES LYNCH, ARCHBISHOP OF TUAM. 

This pious bishop, who succeeded that confessor of the 
faith Dr. Burke in 1669, experienced in the year 1671 how 

* Walsh's Hist, of Rem. part ii. p. 744, etc. Walsh knew nothing of his grace's history 
after his arrival in Louvain. 

f See the Registry of the Priests of Ireland, taken by government in 1704, passim. 

% " Perpetuo damnatus exilio, in Belgium venit, inde Lutetiam ante aliquot menses," says 
the MS. memoir to which I have so often referred, and which was copied by the present Lord 
Arundel from the original MS. paper, written in 1667, and preserved in the convent of St. Isi- 
dore at Rome. 

§ So I learn from a MS. note in Plunket's Jus Prim. p. 31, and from date of Plunket's 
consecration. (He wrote in 1669 from Paris to P. Walsh. See R. 612.) 

With Dr. O'Reilly was confined the venerable Dr. Patrick Plunket, Bishop of Meath. He 
was the second son of Christopher, ninth Lord Killeen, Joined the Cistercians, became 
abbot of St Mary's, Dublin, and, on the recommendation of the nuncio, was promoted, in 1647, 



368 Martyrs and Confessors 

little the sufferings of the Catholics had been diminished 
by the restoration of Charles II. A certain wicked apos- 
tate Augustinian monk, named Martin French, who had 
been reprimanded by the archbishop, denounced him to 
the authorities, and had him accused, under the statute of 
praemunire, of exercising foreign jurisdiction in the British 
dominions. In consequence of these accusations, the arch- 
bishop was detained for many months in prison, and for 
some time was in great danger of being led to the scaffold. 
Archbishop Plunket, on the 24th April, 167 1, thus refers 
to his sufferings : 

" The good Archbishop of Tuam was imprisoned anew, 
during the past Lent, on the accusation of Martin French, 
and was found guilty of praemunire — that is, of exercising 
foreign jurisdiction ; but now, having given security, he is 
allowed to be at liberty till the next sessions of August ; 
but Nicholas Plunket, who is the best lawyer in the king- 
dom, and the only defender that the poor ecclesiastics have 
in such circumstances, writes that he should appeal from 
the courts of Galway to the supreme jurisdiction of Dublin, 
in which there is greater equity." 

On the trial being sent to Dublin, French did not ap- 
pear to prosecute, and soon afterward, touched with re- 
pentance, he petitioned the primate to pardon him his 
guilt and readmit him to the bosom of the holy church. 
The good prelate, moved by his prayers, and still more by 
the tears which testified his horror for the course of crime 
he had pursued, absolved him, in the name of the Holy 
See, from the censures he had incurred, and wrote most 



to the see of Ardagh. During the bloody days of Cromwell he fled to the Continent, and 
about 1665 was permitted to return to his flock. In 1666, he was imprisoned in Dublin along 
with Dr.O'Reilly, and kept in close confinement for several months. Apparently he escaped 
from prison ; for, in November, 1667, Dr. French, Bishop of Ferns, in his EZenchus, presented 
to Pope Clement IX., says that Dr. Plunket then lay hid in the woods, on the mountains, and 
in the cabins of the poor. He died on the t8th November, 1679, in the seventy-sixth year of 
his age, and was buried in the chancel of Killeen.— Cogan's Diocese of Meath, p. 358. 



In the Reign of Charles II 369 

pressing letters to the Archbishop of Tuam, praying him 
to receive back the prodigal son and reinstate him in the 
household of God. 

It was thus Dr. Lynch himself wrote on the 17th Sep- 
tember, 1671, to the internuncio at Brussels. After 
stating that French had repented of his crimes, he adds : 

' He had recourse to the most illustrious lord-primate, 
who freed him from censures, and more than once notified 
the same to us by letters, praying also and beseeching us 
that we would admit to our communion this man, no 
longer subject to censures or irregularities, and that we 
would cast every fault, if there were any, upon his own 
shoulders, and to this testimony we have given every 
credence." — Moraris life of A?rhbishop Plunket, p. 89. 



Anno 1674. 

RIGHT REV. DR. JOHN DE BURGO, VICAR-APOSTOLIC OF 

KILLALA. 

Few, even among the Irish prelates, suffered more at the 
hands of the persecutors than Dr. De Burgo ; of him might 
be said that he was a " minister of Christ in labors more 
abundant, in stripes above measure, in prisons more fre- 
quent, in deaths often ; in perils of waters, in perils of 
robbers, in perils by mine own countrymen, in perils by 
the heathen, in perils in the city, in perils in the wilder- 
ness, in perils in the sea." 

In his youth he had served for some years as an officer 
in the Austrian army of Northern Italy ; but, renouncing 
the world, he dedicated himself to the service of the altar, 
and was appointed Abbot of Clare, in the west of Ireland. 
From 1647 tm " tne bishop's death, in 1650, he acted as 
Vicar-General of Killaloe, and we find him three years later 
arrested by Cromwell, and sent, in company with eighteen 



37° Martyrs and Confessors 

other priests, into banishment. For some years he dedi- 
cated himself to the sacred ministry in France and Italy, 
till 1 67 1, when he received a brief from Rome appointing 
him Vicar-Apostolic of the ancient see of Killala. Toward 
the close of 1672 he reached Ireland ; but in the mean- 
time the Archbishop of Tuam, as metropolitan, had ap- 
pointed a vicar-general for the diocese, and, the matter 
having been referred to Rome, the appointment of Dr. 
Burke appears to have been cancelled. 

Before the close of 1674 he was arrested by order of the 
crown, accused of "bringing Protestants to the Catholic faith, 
contrary to the statutes of the kingdom, exercising foreign 
jurisdiction, preaching perverse doctrine, and remaining in 
the kingdom despite the Act of Parliament of 28th March, 
1674," etc. For two years he was detained in prison with 
irons on his hands and feet. At the assizes he publicly 
declared that the Pope, as Vicar of Christ, was head of the 
Catholic Church. He rejected with scorn a private offer 
that was made to him of being promoted to a Protestant 
bishopric, should he conform to the Established Church. 
Conducted from Ballinrobe to Dublin, he there displayed 
the same firmness, and was at length sentenced to the 
confiscation of his goods and perpetual imprisonment. 
The Earl of Clanricarde, who was his relative, soon after 
obtained his release, which was accorded on condition that 
he should pay the sum of ,£80 sterling (an enormous sum 
for those days) within one month, and retire to the Con- 
tinent. 

During his imprisonment De Burgo had made a vow to 
visit the holy places, should he regain his liberty. In 
1679, he fulfilled this vow, but on his return from Jerusalem 
was captured by pirates in the Mediterranean, stripped of 
all he possessed, and sold as a slave. He, however, found 
means to escape to Constantinople, where he took refuge 
with the Austrian ambassador. He thence proceeded to 



In the Reign of Charles II. 371 

Venice and Rome, and, receiving frequent aid from the 
Sacred Congregation, seems to have passed in peace the 
closing years of his eventful life. 

Most of these particulars are taken from his own narrative 
in 1683, in the archives of the Propaganda. — See Moraiis 
Life of Archbishop Plunket, p. 200. 



Anno 1678. 

MOST REV. PETER TALBOT, ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. 



His life is given at considerable length by Dr. Renehan, 
and will no doubt be fully illustrated in the future second 
volume of Dr. Moran's Archbishops of Dublin. As this 
present work treats only of the sufferings endured for the 
faith, I shall give only an abridgment of Dr. Renehans 
excellent account of the first part of his life : 

" Peter Talbot was a member of that ancient and very 
illustrious family that bore the titles of Earls of Wexford 
and Waterford in Ireland, Earl (at one time Duke) of 
Shrewsbury in England, etc. His father, Sir William 
Talbot, lived at Malahide, and was the ancestor of the 
present Lord Talbot of Malahide. Colonel Richard Tal- 
bot, Earl and Duke of Tyrconnell, and Lord-Lieutenant 
of Ireland, was a younger brother of our prelate.* Peter 
was born at Malahide, in the county of Dublin, in the year 
1620, and, after having been educated as suitably to his 
rank as a Catholic could in these days of uncivilizing 
persecution, he felt a heavenly impulse strongly urging 
him to renounce the wealth and honors of the world at the 
foot of the cross, and to embrace the poverty, the persecu- 
tions, and the sacred ministry of Jesus. He was according- 
ly sent over to Portugal, to be trained up in the spirit and 

* Carte's Ormond, vol. Ii. p. 384. 



372 Martyrs and Confessors 

to acquire the learning necessary for the ecclesiastical 
state, and was there received, in the year 1635, mto the 
society of the Jesuits. Having finished his course of 
philosophy under the Jesuits in Portugal, he was sent to 
their college in Rome, to acquire in the capital of the 
Christian world greater knowledge of Scripture, theology, 
and law. After a long course of probation, he received the 
holy order of priesthood at Rome, returned soon after to 
Portugal, and was sent by his superior to teach moral 
theology at Antwerp.* 

" While Talbot was here enjoying the peaceful pursuits 
of a collegiate life, his native country was agonizing under 
the bloody ferocities of Cromwell's army, and England was 
being disgraced by the murder of one king and the ban- 
ishment of another. Charles II. fled to Paris, whence he 
removed to Cologne in July, 1655, after the conclusion of 
the treaty between the French court and Cromwell. His 
majesty now turned his thoughts on engaging the Spanish 
court to assist in his restoration. Talbot possessed a 
great deal" of influence with many of the Spanish ministers 
in Flanders, and particularly with the Count de Fonsal- 
dagna, who at that time was the actual governor of the 
country, though the Archduke Leopold enjoyed the title. 
His old and special intimacy with Father Daniel Daly, 
alias Dominick a Rosario, a native of Kerry, and the am- 
bassador of the King of Portugal at the court of France, 
besides the vast power and influence of the society to 
which he belonged, enabled Talbot to be of incalculable 
service to Charles in the days of his distress. He fre- 
quently visited his majesty at Cologne, and was always 
honored with the most gracious and friendly reception. 
Conversation, after some acquaintance, often turned on 
the respective merits of the Catholic and Protestant reli- 
gions. If the king was willing to learn, Talbot was able 

* Life in Bibliotheca Patrum S. y. 



In the Reign of Charles II 373 

and willing to teach ; and so deep was the impression 
made on the conscience of his majesty that, after a secret 
conference of some days, he at length shut himself up with 
our professor in his closet for several days, till his convic- 
tion was fully completed, and every doubt removed from 
his mind. Charles, however, was not a man who would 
forfeit a crown to follow his convictions. He knew how 
much the English mind was maddened by the spirit of bi- 
gotry against the Catholic Church ; he knew the charac- 
ter of Ormond and the others that surrounded his person ; 
he probably saw that those calculating royalists might be- 
lieve that his conversion would mar their projects for the 
settlement and partition of Ireland ; and he therefore de- 
termined to be received into the bosom of the Catholic 
Church as secretly as possible, and afterward, and then 
only, to absent himself from Protestant communion, but 
to make no declaration of his religious opinions. Talbot 
had thus the pleasure to witness his solemn renunciation 
of the errors of Protestantism, and to receive him, after a 
formal profession of faith, into the Catholic Church, and 
no doubt to administer to him the holy sacraments. 

" The royal convert persevered for a few years ; but af- 
terward his absence from Protestant service had been 
jealously remarked by his ministers, and the secret of his 
conversion was not only whispered on the Continent, but 
reported in England, when the boasted and amply reward- 
ed loyalty of his Protestant supporters chuckled at the 
fact, and called for its denial or an open profession of 
Protestantism. Charles, with characteristic inconstancy, 
dissembled, denied, renounced the convictions of his heart 
with the same readiness as he pledged his honor or his 
oath, at different times, to support and to repudiate the 
Irish peace, the Scotch Covenant, and the English Church. 
Talbot's labor, however, was not lost either to the country 
or to the unhappy king. His majesty, though a weak and 



374 Martyrs and Confessors 

ambitious man, was a sincere convert, and, if he dared, would 
have proved that sincerity through life which he evinced 
at his death. When the earthly crown could no longer be 
held, Charles made an anxious effort to seize on a crown 
in heaven. He sent for Father Huddlestone to receive 
him again into the church, and to prepare him for eterni- 
ty. He needed but little instruction ; Talbot had supplied 
that want. His repentance had every appearance of being 
intense and fervent ; he received the last sacraments with 
piety, and died a Catholic. 



"Various causes combined, about the year 1668, to in- 
duce the government to connive at the appointment of a 
few bishops to some of the many vacant sees ; and thus 
the episcopal hierarchy, reduced for some years before to 
three individuals, (as was noticed in the history of the 
Primates of Armagh,) was saved from utter extinction. 
Dr. Talbot was the first person, or among the first, chosen 
by his holiness, and was nominated to the archiepiscopal 
see of Dublin. How little he ambitioned this arduous but 
important station may be inferred from the fact that no 
sooner did he learn that his promotion was intended than 
he went to Father Joseph Simons, the then provincial of 
the Jesuits in England, and offered him, and through him 
the Most Rev. Father Oliver, the general of the order, to 
reenter the society, if they deemed that course more con- 
ducive to the interests of religion. But these fathers, con- 
sidering the invaluable services a person of his talents, in- 
formation, and family influence was likely to render the 
Catholic cause in Ireland, not only renounced their claim 
upon him, but used all their influence to forward his pro- 
motion to a see, and in particular to that of Dublin. 
When the bull of his appointment arrived, Talbot, in 
order to avoid publicity, went over privately to Flanders, 



In the Reign of Charles II. 375 

and was consecrated at Ghent, near Louvain, on the 2d 
of May, 1669. 

" Dr. Talbot lost no time, after his consecration, in visit- 
ing his diocese. It had been now thirteen years deprived 
of a bishop, and from extreme old age Dr. Fleming must 
have been able to afford it little succor during the last 
seven years of his life, spent in concealment. A people 
whose religion and morals were just after being exposed 
to the dangers of a ten years' civil war, to the horrors of 
Cromwell's devastation, the fanatical persecution of his 
followers, the irritating ingratitude of the restored king, 
and the legalized spoliation of the Act of Settlement, pre- 
sented a large field for the exercise of episcopal zeal, and 
required all his attention and activity. Our archbishop 
wanted neither the energy nor zeal nor abilities fitted to 
the occasion. On visiting the diocese he found that the 
Very Rev. James S. Dempsey, the vicar-apostolic, who had 
provided for its administration during the vacancy, had 
been necessitated to admit persons of inferior literary quali- 
fications to the pastoral charge. To remedy this evil and 
promote learning among the clergy, Talbot held a diocesan 
synod in August, 1670, wherein itw r as enacted that all the 
parishes or benefices should be disposed of in future by 
concursus to the most successful answerer, and that all the 
parochial clergy should be examined within a month, and 
prove their competency for the cure of souls, or be instant- 
ly deprived thereof. He also commanded that each clergy- 
man should give catechetical instruction on every Sunday 
and holyday, not only to the children, but to the people at 
large. The following March he convoked a second synod, 
in which other regulations were enacted for reforming the 
manners of the laity, (specially that no Catholic should at- 
tempt to marry a Jew or infidel, under pain of excommuni- 
cation,) that the bans should be solemnly published before 



276 Martyrs and Confessors 

marriage, and that any of the faithful who dies without re- 
ceiving the last sacraments through his own fault should 
be deprived of Christian burial.* 

" From the time of Dr. Talbot's appointment to the see 
of Dublin, his supposed influence in the English court, his 
uncompromising opposition to the intrigues of the remon- 
strants, and his zealous discharge of his sacred duties, ex- 
posed him to the calumnies and bitter hostility of a large 
party in Ireland. He was charged particularly with the 
design of introducing, contrary to law, 'popish aldermen' 
into the corporation of Dublin, and of reversing the Act of 
Settlement. Of course the Protestants were excited be- 
yond measure at the thought of losing their ill-got posses- 
sions, and they appealed to the English parliament for pro. 
tection. 

" An address was accordingly presented to the king, re- 
quiring, among other things, that ' Peter Talbot, pretended 
Archbishop of Dublin, for his notorious disloyalty aud dis- 
obedience and contempt of the laws, be commanded by 
proclamation to depart forthwith out of Ireland and all 
his majesty's dominions, or otherwise to be prosecuted ac- 
cording to law,' etc. In consequence of this edict, Dr. 
Talbot was banished the kingdom, about the beginning of 
1673- 

" Dr. Talbot returned to England in 1675, where he 
resided for the next two years in Poole Hall, Cheshire.! 
His health had been failing so rapidly that he sought and 
obtained, through the interest of his brother with the 
Duke of York, Ormond's permission to come to Ireland, 
' to die/ as he said, ' in his own country.' Before obtaining 
this leave, he had to promise to live quietly with his own 

"* Statuta Dublinensia, (1770?) pp. 80, 81. 
t Carte, ii. p. 477 ; Harris's Writers^ p. 193. 



In the Reign of Charles II 377 

family, and to interfere no further in political questions, 
not because the helpless archbishop, who was borne in a 
chair to his brother's house, could be suspected of a 
serious design to subvert the government, but as a plea to 
justify the severity of the measures already taken against 
him. 

" Shortly after Dr. Talbot's arrival in Ireland, the Duke 
of Ormond received a letter from the secretary of state, 
informing him of the discovery of the 'popish plot,' and of 
the means adopted to extend it to Ireland ; that Peter 
Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, was one of the accomplices, 
and that assassins were hired to murder the duke himself. 
The duke had no apprehension of that nature at that 
time, the Irish being in no condition to raise an insurrec- 
tion, and Peter Talbot in a dying way. He signed, 
however, a warrant on the 8th, (October, 1678,) and de- 
spatched an officer to secure his person.* 

" Dr. Talbot was arrested in his father's house at Car- 
town, near Maynooth ; his papers, containing nothing but 
dissertations on controversy, were all seized and carefully 
examined. He was immediately removed to Dublin ' in a 
chair, and committed close prisoner to the castle, with a 
person to attend him in his miserable and helpless condi- 
tion, the violence of his distemper being scarcely supporta- 
ble, and threatening his death at every moment.'f Harris 
adds 'that nothing appeared against him from his examina- 
tion, nor from those of others. $ Yet he was continued in 
the castle about two years, and died in confinement in the 



* Carte, ii. p. 478. t Carte, ibid. 

X P. Walsh, far the most unscrupulous of his accusers, charges him with reducing to 
practice the worst maxims of what was unjustly called Jesuitical casuistry. According to that 
libeller, Dr. Talbot maintained the lawfulness of equivocation, calumny, assassination, murder, 
treason, etc., provided only the act were useful to yourself, to your family, to your society or 
order. Walsh asserts that Dr. Talbot was justly expelled by the Jesuits for some grievou3 
crime, which he knows, but will not mention ; and on the same page, and with this admission 
before him, he asserts also they were mainly instrumental in procuring his promotion to the 
6ee of Dublin to serve their own interests. — Hist. Remons. pp. 258-260. 



378 Martyrs and Confessors 

year 1680.'* The reader will no doubt be surprised to 
find such admissions in the pages of Carte and Harris, 
and more so still to find their calumnies repeated by 
authors without number who never notice the statements 
favorable to the archbishop. 

" To add to the sufferings of this amiable prelate, he 
saw his own brother, Colonel Talbot, and Father Ryan, 
superior of the Jesuits, first cast into the same prison, and 
then, when the horrors of the jail became insupportable, 
ordered out of the country. And he knew well, if he 
was deprived of the happiness of sharing in their exile, it was 
only because the attempt to remove him in his present 
exhausted state would instantly cause death. 

" It would be unjust to the memory of Dr. Talbot not to 
give the vivid description of the circumstances connected 
with his imprisonment and death, left us by a contemporary 
and countryman, Richard Arsdekin, S.J. This I translate 
literally from the dedication of the Theologia Tripartita. 
Its fidelity may be relied on the more because the author had 
reason to complain of some expressions applied to himself 
by Dr. Talbot during the discussion on the primacy, and 
cannot therefore be suspected of partiality. ' After a short 
time, when the storm of persecution had abated somewhat 
rather than subsided, Dr. Talbot returned to Ireland, 
where he labored to restore church discipline, to encourage 
the Catholics, and to elude the machinations of heretics. 
But his enemies could not long bear the light. They 
were incensed at his zeal, and jealous of his influence with 
the people ; and, as is usually the case, they resolved to 
destroy what they feared. Secret accusations were made 
before a heretical tribunal, suspicions created, all the other 
means craftily employed to oppress the just man, opposed 
to their wicked designs, and whose worst crime was to 
have the name, the office, and authority of a priest. At 

* Harris's Writers, book i. p. 193. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 379 

length the excellent prelate, always supported by the 
testimony of a good conscience, was seized on suddenly 
by wicked officials and cast into a public prison without 
being guilty of the least offence. There this faithful 
soldier of Christ was shut up in close imprisonment for 
some time ; but neither keepers nor prison walls nor 
chains could restrain that freedom of spirit which anima- 
ted the true pastor, and made him more careful of the 
salvation of others than of his own life. While he patient- 
ly awaited the usual inhuman sentence of that heretical 
tribunal, his feeble body, no longer a fit tenement for 
the noble spirit, was broken down by heavy sickness. 
Still the soldier of Christ struggled on against disease and 
the filth of a loathsome dungeon, destitute of almost all 
human aid, with nothing to console him but a firm 
resolution and conscious innocence. At length, after 
enduring various and repeated tortures, he suffered death, 
not indeed beneath the axe of the executioner, but immur- 
ed in a filthy prison, and he passed to that better world 
where God has promised a crown of justice to those who 
strive lawfully. But this most illustrious prelate shall ever 
live in the memory of men ; he shall ever live in the 
society of holy confessors ; from him the injustice of man, 
the cunning and envy of heretics, shall never take away 
the laurels won in a glorious fight. O blind Tyranny ! 
thou art deceived : whatever thou dost, whatever thou 
proposest, the blood of martyrs has been, and ever will be, 
the seed of Christians ! Of this truth Ireland, ever 
faithful to her God and to her king, has given for ages, and 
will continue to give, a noble example.'* 

" Some recent writers have, quite erroneously, fixed the 
date of Dr. Talbot's death in 1681, against the unanimous 

* Theologia Tripartita Richardi Arsdekin, S.% ; Prosecutio Ded. torn. i. edit, quinta, 
Antverpiae, anno 1682. Arsdekin entered the society in 1642, being then twenty-three years 
of age. and was consequently only about one year older than Dr. Talbot. — See Hib. Dom. pp. 
131, 815. 



380 Martyrs and Confessors 

testimony of our best-informed historians. It is quite 
certain he died in 1680, and probably at the close of that 
vear. The nuncio wrote from Brussels, December 21, 1680, 
' that my Lord Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, has died 
of his sufferings in the prisons of Ireland, (e morto 
d'infermita nelle carcere dTbernia ;) that Dr. Plunket was 
several times examined, without, of course, any crime being 
discovered against him, and was still most strictly guarded ; 
and that Lord Stafford was accused by many of the usual 
witnesses, and could depend only on the fears of the peers, 
who did not know, if they admitted such proof, when the 
same would be used against themselves.' "* 



Anno 1679. 

RIGHT REV. DR. FORSTALL, BISHOP OF KILDARE. 

" Dr. Forstall was a prelate of great virtue and learn- 
ing, and before his appointment to the see of Kildare he had 
held high ecclesiastical offices in Vienna, in which he won 
for himself the esteem and favor of the imperial court. 
He was a member of the Order of St. Augustine, all of whose 
convents throughout the kingdom had been impoverished 
or destroyed ; and some idea of the poverty of the Irish 
Church at this period may be formed from the fact that 
Dr. Plunket, the martyred archbishop, mentions that the 
diocese of Kildare yielded to its bishop a revenue of only 
56 scudi a year, or little more than £1 per month, f 
And he consequently (20th August, 1677) solicited and 
obtained for him the administration of the diocese of 
Leighlin, which had also fifteen or sixteen priests, and a 
revenue of only fifty or sixty scudi. 

"Toward the close of the year 1679, Dr. Forstall was 

* Extract from original documents of Padre Theiner, by L F. R. 
t Dr. Plunket also says the diocese had only fifteen priests. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 381 

cast into prison ; and even after his liberation the fury of 
persecution compelled him to seek for safety in the woods 
and mountains, until, in 1683, he closed his earthly career,- 
an exile in the diocese of Cashel." — Moraris Life of Dr. 
Plunket, p. 169. 

Anno 1680. i 

RIGHT REV. DOMINICK DE BURGO, O.P.P., BISHOP OF ELPHIN. 

" He was born in Ireland about the year 1629, of parents 
conspicuous alike for the nobility of their race and their 
constancy in the faith. About the year 1648, when the 
whole kingdom was torn with war, led by the desire of 
leading a more perfect life, and devoting himself to the 
warfare of the Gospel, he entered the holy order of St. 
Dominick.* He then embarked for Spain, but, being taken 
prisoner at sea by the heretical English, was carried to 
Kinsale, where he was despoiled of his clothes and the 
money he had for his journey, and thrown into prison. 
Hence he escaped by the singular favor of God, having 
jumped down from the wall of the prison into the mud left 
by the receding tide. He lay hid in a wood there for two 
days, covered with mud up to his neck, because he dared 
not go to the river to wash. During these two days he 
neither ate nor drank. At length, he made his way with 
difficulty to the house of a certain Catholic nobleman of 
the name of Roche. Here he was kindly received and 
harbored until he had recovered his strength, when he was 
furnished with clothes and money, and allowed to depart in 
peace. Thus aided, he made his way safely to the house 
of his mother, who was astonished at his appearance, and 
insisted that he should not again expose himself to the 

* In the times o r oersecution aspirants to the religious life generally were received into the 
order and clothed in Ireland, and then proceeded abroad to pass their noviceship in one of the 
Irish monasteries on the Continent, 



382 Martyrs and Confessors 

dangers of the sea. His determination, however, prevail- 
ed ; and, having obtained from his mother fresh supplies 
for his journey, he embarked at Galway, and, reaching 
Spain in safety, proceeded to Segovia, and spent six years 
in our convent of the Holy Cross there. When his studies 
were completed, as the Cromwellian persecution made it 
impossible to reach Ireland, he proceeded to Andalusia, 
and thence to Italy, where he dwelt for about sixteen 
years, much esteemed by all for his probity and zeal for 
religion. He was held in the highest consideration by the 
illustrious Father Julius Vincent Gentili, who was twice 
provincial of the province of Lombardy, and afterward 
an Archbishop. Dr. Burgo held many high offices 
in his order, and was in 1671 named by Clement X. 
Bishop of Elphin, a dignity which he had not sought, but 
to which he was called unexpectedly, even as Aaron was. 
He was consecrated at Ghent, in the forty-first year of his 
age, and immediately returned to his native land, where 
for thirty years he zealously discharged every duty of his 
sacred office. 

C1 It were long to tell all he suffered in the bitter perse- 
cution which was got up against the Catholics in England 
and Ireland in 1680. A reward of two hundred pounds 
was offered for his apprehension by the viceroy and coun- 
cil, for which reason he always travelled by night while 
that persecution lasted. For four months he lay hid in a soli- 
tary house, and never even put his foot outside the door : 
but when the time came for consecrating the holy oils 
(Maundy-Thursday) he travelled by night forty miles from 
that place. 

" I (John O'Heyn) was his companion all that year, until 
the illustrious Archbishop of Armagh, Dr. Oliver Plunket, 
was taken prisoner. He often, from his prison in Dublin, 
warned the Bishop of Elphin of the plans of the supreme 
council for his apprehension, and by this means much aid- 



In the Reign of Charles II. 383 

ed him to escape their snares. Had he fallen into their 
hands, no doubt his fate would have been the same as that 
of the primate, who was hung, beheaded, and quartered on 
the 1st of July, 168 1. In the war of rebellion against our 
King James II. he was compelled to take refuge in the city 
of Galway, out of his own diocese. King James and his 
queen esteemed him much. When he was driven into 
exile, King Louis of France offered him an abbey, but he 
preferred to go to Louvain, and share the poverty of his 
order in our college of Holy Cross there. 

" When our convent in Louvain was in a ruinous state, 
and had to be vacated for repairs, he went to live with the 
Friars Minors in the same city. There, in his seventy-fifth 
year, worn out with labors for religion, having made 
his confession and received the holy communion and ex- 
treme unction, he calmly yielded up his soul to his Saviour, 
on the first day of the year 1704, between the ninth and 
tenth hour of the evening, and is buried in this church, be- 
side the high altar." — Hib. Dom. p. 496 ; G Heyn, p. 33 ; 

De Jonglie, p. 423. 

— ♦ — 

REV. FATHER DOMINICK LYNZE,* O.P.P. 

" He studied in Spain, and returning to Ireland, led 
there a most exemplary life, although he was the son of a 
heretical minister. He showed that the works of faith and 
grace come not to men by their birth or by nature, but 
from our Lord God, by Jesus Christ ; for he was so averse 
to all heretics that he ever avoided their company, although 
many of them, like the Catholics, sought his society, for he 
was very agreeable in conversation, although ever observ- 
ing a religious gravity. He suffered much in the persecu- 
tion which sprang up in 1680. He lay for a whole year in 
prison, in close confinement, which he bore with such 

* " Lvnze." This name is probably the same as Lynch. 



384 Martyrs and Confessors 

equanimity and cheerfulness as to astonish the heretics 
who spoke with him. After his deliverance from prison 
he lived until the year 1686, when, fortified with the sacra- 
ments of the church, he calmly departed to our Lord." — 
GHeyn, p. 24. 



A.nno 1681. 

THE MOST REV. OLIVER PLUNKET, ARCHBISHOP OF ARMAGH. 

For a full account of this illustrious prelate, the latest 
martyr of the Irish Church, I must refer my readers to the 
valuable work of Dr. Moran,* from which the following 
brief account is extracted. As the purport of this work is 
only to give an account of the sufferings of the martyrs 
and confessors of the faith, I shall give a very short account 
of the life of Dr. Plunket up to the time of his apprehen- 
sion. 

Oliver Plunket was born at Loughcrew, in the county 
of Meath, in the year 1629. He was a near relative of Dr. 
Patrick Plunket, who successively ruled the dioceses of Ar- 
dagh and Meath, as also of Dr. Peter Talbot, Archbishop 
of Dublin. He was also related to the Earls of Fingall 
and Roscommon, and to the Barons of Dunsany and Louth. 
From an early age he showed a desire to devote himself 
to the sacred ministry, and his education was entrusted to 
his relative, Dr. Patrick Plunket, then titular Abbot of St. 
Mary's, Dublin, until the age of sixteen, when he proceed- 
ed to Rome, there to pursue his studies. In 1643, Father 
Peter Francis Scarampo, an Oratorian, had been sent by 
the Holy See on a special mission to Ireland ; in 1645, he 
returned to Rome, and young Plunket accompanied him. 

Plunket lived in the Irish college, and pursued his studies 
in the Roman college of the Society of Jesus. In 1654, he 

■* Life of Archbishop Plunket, by Rev. P. Moran, D.D. Dublin, 1865. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 385 

was ordained priest, but, it being impossible at that date 
for him to proceed to Ireland, he took up his residence 
with the Jesuit fathers of St. Girolamo della Carita. In 
1657, ne was appointed professor in the college of the 
Propaganda, which office he held for twelve years. 

On the 9th of July, 1669, Dr. Oliver Plunket was nomi- 
nated by the Sacred Congregation Archbishop of Armagh, 
in succession to Dr. Edmund O'Reilly. He wished much 
to be consecrated in Rome, but it was deemed more pru- 
dent that he should be consecrated in Brussels, which was 
done on the 30th November, 1669. He immediately left 
for London, and, although detained at Holyhead for twelve 
days by contrary winds, reached Dublin by the middle of 
March. 

At this time the violence of the Cromwellian persecution 
was over ; and although new laws were constantly passed 
against Catholics, they were little put in execution, and the 
government connived at the existence of priests, and the 
viceroy, Lord Berkeley, was favorable to a policy of some- 
thing like toleration. 

Dr. Plunket immediately hastened to his diocese, where 
he held two synods and two ordinations, and in a month 
and a half administered confirmation to more than ten 
thousand people, and in four years to forty-eight thousand 
six hundred and fifty-five. 

Before the end of 1673, however, the storm of persecution 
again began to rage ; bishops and regulars were especially 
sought after, and were compelled to hide. Dr. Plunket, 
together with Dr. Brennan, Bishop of Waterford, were con- 
cealed in a wretched thatched cabin, through the holes in 
the roof of which the rain poured on their beds, and it was 
with difficulty they could procure even oaten bread for food. 
All the convents were destroyed, the monks scattered, and 
the bishops obliged to hide in the mountains. With very 
slight intervals of relaxation, this persecution lasted until 



386 Martyrs and Confessors 

the death of our holy martyr. In 1678, fresh edicts were 
issued, and bishops and priests sought for more rigorously 
than ever. The infamous conspiracy against the lives of 
Catholics known as the story of the popish plot was set on 
foot this year in England, and the viceroy, the Duke of 
Ormond, although his private letters show he was well 
aware of the falseness of the story, fostered the delusion, 
and issued fresh edicts against the Catholics : all bishops, 
Jesuits, regulars, and priests were ordered to leave the 
kingdom ; all chapels, or Mass-houses as they were called, 
were closed or pulled down. The first victim was the illus- 
trious Archbishop of Dublin, Dr. Peter Talbot. He had 
only returned to England from his exile on the Continent 
in 1676, and a few months before the present outbreak 
against the Catholics, through the intercession of the Duke 
of York, obtained permission to revisit and console his 
spiritual flock. 

In the month of November, 1679, Dr. Plunket left his 
place of concealment in the secluded parts of his own dio- 
cese, and came to Dublin to assist, in his last moments, 
his relative, the aged Bishop of Meath. Ten days later he 
was arrested in his place of concealment, in the city of 
Dublin, by a body of militia headed by Hetherington, and 
by order of the viceroy he was committed a close prisoner 
to Dublin Castle. This was on the 6th December, 1679. 
For six weeks no communication with him was allowed ; 
but after that term, nothing treasonable having been dis- 
covered in his papers, he was treated with more lenity, and 
permitted to receive visits from his friends. The only 
crime of which he was at first accused was that of remain- 
ing in the kingdom, notwithstanding the proclamation, and 
of exercising the functions of his sacred ministry. Thus 
his relative, the Rev. William Plunket, wrote on the 20th 
March, 1680, to the Propaganda: "I hastened thither, (to 
the castle,) and having heard and learned for certain that 



In the Reign of Charles II 387 

he had been imprisoned only for being a Catholic bishop, 
and for not having abandoned the flock of our Lord in obe- 
dience to the edict published by Parliament, I was some- 
what consoled, it being his and our glory that he should 
suffer in such a cause." 

So on his trial the primate declared, " I was a prisoner 
six months, only for my religion, and there was not a word 
of treason spoken of against me for so many years." And 
the attorney-general himself avowed that he was arrested 
" for being an over-zealous papist." 

But a plot to bring him to trial for complicity in the trea- 
son of the imaginary " popish plot " was being hatched, 
and the chief actors in it, as in all the false witness borne 
against him, were wicked and apostate friars, whom it had 
been his duty to punish for neglect of the duties of their 
order. 

Chief among these was a friar named MacMoyer, whom 
Dr. Plunket had suspended for various crimes, and who 
was noted for his violence, drunkenness, and immoralities. 
An indictment against the archbishop for conspiracy was 
presented to the grand jury of the county of Dublin, and 
supported by the evidence of this MacMoyer and others, 
but the grand jury would not find the bill. 

The Protestant bishop Burnet gives the following ac- 
count of this proceeding : 

" Plunket, the popish Primate of Armagh, was at this 
time brought to his trial. Some lewd Irish priests, and 
others of that nation, hearing that England was at that 
time disposed to hearken to good swearers, thought them- 
selves well qualified for that employment ; so they came 
over to swear that there was a great plot in Ireland to 
bring over a French army, and to massacre all the English. 
The witnesses were brutal and profligate men ; yet the 
Earl of Shaftesbury cherished them much, they were exa- 
mined by the Parliament at Westminster, and what they 



388 Martyrs and Confessors 

said was believed. Upon that encouragement it was reck- 
oned that we should have witnesses come over in whole 
companies. Lord Essex told me that this Plunket was a 
wise and sober man, who was always in a different inter- 
est from the two Talbots, the one of these being the titu- 
lar Archbishop of Dublin, and the other raised after- 
ward to be Duke of Tyrconnell. Some of these priests 
had been censured by him for their lewdness, and they 
drew others to swear as they had directed them. They 
had appeared the winter before upon a bill offered to 
the grand jury, but, as the foreman of the jury, who was a 
zealous Protestant, told me, they contradicted one an- 
other so evidently that they would not find a bill. But 
now that they laid their story better together, and swore 
against Plunket that he had got a great bank of money to 
be prepared, and that he had an army listed, and was in 
correspondence with France to bring over a fleet from 
thence, he had nothing to say in his own defence, but to 
deny all. So he was condemned, and suffered, very de- 
cently expressing himself in many particulars as became 
a bishop. He died denying everything that had been 
sworn against him." 

It was not till the month of June, 1680, that the wit- 
nesses had fully arranged their plans. Armed with com- 
mendatory letters from the English court, they now re- 
turned to Ireland assured of success. Among the many 
precautions taken by the apostate friar MacMoyer, one 
was to have a government order sent from London to the 
viceroy that no Catholic should be a member of the jury. 
" Orders had been transmitted to Ireland," says the pri- 
•mate on his trial, " that I should be tried in Ireland, and 
that no Roman Catholic should be on the jury, and so it 
was in both the grand jury and the other jury ; yet there, 
when I came to my trial, after I was arraigned, not one 
appeared." Dr. Plunket did not object to this arrange- 



In the Reign of Charles II. 389 

merit, though in itself most unjust, so conscious was he of 
his own innocence, and of the known character of his ac- 
cusers ; and after the words which we have just cited, he 
again avowed upon his trial : " If I had been in Ireland, I 
w T ould have put myself on my trial to-morrow, without any 
witnesses, before any Protestant jury that knew them and 
me." 

The viceroy, however, decreed that the trial should be 
held in Dundalk, the scene of the reputed treasonable 
crimes ; and, as we shall just now see, this alone sufficed 
to derange all the plans of the witnesses, for they were 
conscious that their character was well known in that 
quarter, and that evidence could be without difficulty pro- 
cured there of their malignity and evil designs and per- 
juries. Dr. Plunket, writing to the internuncio on the 
25th of July, 1680, the day after his return from Dundalk, 
gives the following detailed account of the proceedings of 
this trial : 

"Your letter of the 17th July consoled me in my tribu- 
lations and miseries. The friar MacMoyer, as well in the 
criminal sessions of Dundalk as after these sessions, pre- 
sented a memorial that the trial should not be held in 
Dundalk, where he was too well known, and that it should 
be deferred till September or March next, but the vice- 
roy refused. 

" I was brought with a guard to Dundalk on the 21st of 
July. Dundalk is thirty-six miles from Dublin. I was there 
consigned to the king's lieutenant in that district, who treat- 
ed me with great courtesy ; on the 23d and 24th of July I was 
presented for trial. A long process was read, but on the 
24th MacMoyer did not appear to confirm his depositions 
and hear my defence. I had thirty-two witnesses, priests, 
friars, and seculars, prepared to falsify all that the friar 
had sworn, forsooth that I had seventy thousand Catholics 
'prepared to murder all the Protestants, and to establish here 



390 Martyrs and Confessors 

the Romish religion and popish superstition ; that I had 
sent numerous agents to different kingdoms to obtain aid ; 
that I had visited and explored all the fortresses and mari- 
time ports of the kingdom; and that I held a provincial 
council in 1678, to introduce the French. He also accused 
in his depositions, Monsignor Tyrrell ; Rev. Luke Plun- 
ket, the ordinary of Derry ; and Rev. Edward Dromgole, 
an eminent preacher. Murphy (the second witness) no 
sooner heard that the sessions and trial would be held in 
Dundalk than he fled out of the kingdom ; and hence 
MacMoyer alleged that he himself could not appear, as 
he awaited the return of Murphy ; and so these sessions ter- 
minated, and, according to the laws of this country, I must 
present myself at three criminal sessions before I can be 
absolved ; and, as there will be no sessions in Dundalk 
till the end of March, my counsel and friends recommend- 
ed me to present a memorial to have the cause adjudg- 
ed in Dublin at the next criminal sessions of All Saints', 
and that the jury of Dundalk should be brought to Dublin, 
which perhaps I may obtain. The manner of proceeding 
here in criminal cases seems very strange to me. The per- 
son accused knows nothing of the accusation till the day 
of trial ; he is allowed no counsel to plead his cause ; the 
oath is not given to his witnesses, and one witness suffices 
for the crown. They receive, however, the evidence of 
the witnesses of the accused, although they do not admin- 
ister the oath to them. The sessions being over, I was re- 
conducted, by order of the viceroy, to the Royah Castle of 
Dublin, to my dear and costly apartment. Considering, 
however, the shortness of the time spent in Dundalk, it 
was still more expensive, as I had to bring thirty-two wit- 
nesses from different parts and maintain them for four 
days in Dundalk, and among the guards and servants of 
the lieutenant I distributed forty crowns. Although the 
two chief-judges are appointed by the crown, the jury is 



In the Reign of Charles II. 391 

cnosen by the lieutenant of the district of Dundalk As 
there are more Catholics than Protestants in the county 
Louth, MacMoyer, foreseeing that some Catholics would 
surely be on the jury, and knowing that the lieutenant, 
who, from his office, is called sheriff, was a friend of mine, 
presented a memorial that no Catholic should be on the 
jury, and he obtained his petition. I made no opposition, 
knowing well that all the Protestants of my district looked 
upon MacMoyer as a confederate of the Tories, and hence, 
at the criminal sessions of Armagh, in 1678, he was pro- 
secuted and fined ; and I knew, moreover, that they all 
deemed fabulous the story sworn by MacMoyer against 
me ; and, moreover, his dissolute life was notorious, and he 
was always half-drunk when he appeared before the tribu- 
nals. Murphy fled because he well knew that the jury of 
Dundalk would have hanged him. He had been imprisoned 
in Dundalk and escaped ; he was found in the company of 
the Tories, and he concealed the articles which they stole. 
It is said that he has gone to England to obtain pardon 
from the king, that he may afterward appear against me ; 
not to accuse me in crimine Icesce majestatis, (of treason,) 
but of exercising papal jurisdiction in this kingdom. An- 
other witness, Callaghan, accuses me in like manner, and 
it is an accusation which I deem most glorious. It is 
more than two years since MacMoyer commenced his ac- 
cusations against me, as is clear from the depositions. 

" I more than once wrote to your excellency to request 
my masters to send me some aid. I am at this moment 
500 crowns in debt; I have to pay here £1 a week for 
my own and my servant's apartments, and having no 
means to pay for my food, one of my servants brings it to 
me in a basket from the house of two Catholic noblemen. 
This is the truth, coram Deo, et non mentior ; and although 
you well know I have not now received one halfpenny from 
my masters, yet Catholics here, as well as Protestants, can 



392 Martyrs and Confessors 

with difficulty be induced to believe it. Here there is no 
such thing as revenue ; as you know, we depend on the 
benevolence of the Catholics, who are reduced to such 
poverty, especially in my districts, that it is difficult for 
the parish priests to find the means of subsistence. So 
many, between bandits and soldiery, are continually in pur- 
suit of them, that in my district the greater part left their 
holdings ; in fact, all the military are maintained at the 
expense of the poor Catholics, and many, not being able 
to pay, are imprisoned." 

But the scene was now to be soon shifted from the 
shores of Ireland to the banks of the Thames. Mac- 
Moyer and his associates felt that it would be impossible 
for them to attain their wicked purpose in a country where 
their crimes were so public and the primate so revered ; 
they therefore petitioned the king that the trial should be 
transferred to London. The suggestion was pleasing to 
the court, and about the middle of October Dr. Plunket 
received a summons to appear before Parliament and the 
king to answer to the charges imputed to him. There 
are two letters of the archbishop written on this occasion, 
one on the 21st of October, announcing this summons to 
London, and another, written on board the vessel on the 
24th, the day of his departure from Ireland. In the former 
he thus writes : 

" I have been cited to appear before the king and Par- 
liament in London, and I leave to-day to embark. May all 
be for the greater glory of God and the salvation of my 
soul. Another friar has made his appearance as informer. 
His name is George Coddan : he was imprisoned for some 
crime, and, to obtain his liberty, became informer against 
me and against Dr. Hugo, one of the chapter of Armagh, 
alleging that he was nuncio of the pope. A third friar, 
also, a certain Paul Gormley, who was prisoner in Derry, 
being arrested for robbery, now gives evidence in order to 



In the Reign of Charles II. 393 

save himself. He studied in Prague. I request you to 
speak to Mr. Joyce that he may transmit the money to Mr. 
John Comin without delay. The expenses are and will be 
intolerable, and already I have sold a part of the few things 
I had, and pledged the remainder, even to the chalice and 
cross. From London, if possible, you will receive further 
intelligence. I have been deprived of pen, ink, and paper. 
I write sub galli cantu et clam ac furtive. Let Mr. Joyce 
not mind the exchange, for necessitas non habet legem. One 
consolation there is, that the captain of the guard which 
accompanies me is not my enemy. Dr. Tyrrell, Mr. Luke 
Plunket, and Dr. Dromgole have been declared guilty of 
treason by the grand jury. A strange thing that, on the 
mere deposition of witnesses, sentence should be given 
against persons who are absent and unheard ! 

"I request you to communicate this intelligence to 
Monsignor Cybo, or to send him this letter. There are 
many of the Irish nobility and gentry here accused of this 
Utopian conspiracy, as my Lord Poer, now Earl of Tuam ; 
my Lord Brittas, etc. I recommend myself to the sacrifices 
and prayers of all. 

" 2 1 st October, 1680." 

I will now give his trial, from the account printed in 
1681 : 

"On the 3d of May, 1681, in Easter term, Dr. Oliver 
Plunket was arraigned at the king's bench bar for high 
treason, and for endeavoring and compassing the king's 
death, and to levy war in Ireland, and to alter the religion 
there, and to introduce a foreign power. And at his 
arraignment, before his plea, he urged for himself that he 
was indicted of the same high treason in Ireland and 
arraigned, and at the day for his trial the witnesses against 
him did not appear ; and therefore he desired to know if 
he could be tried here for the same fact. The court told 
him that, by a statute made in this kingdom, he might be 



394 Martyrs and Confessors 

tried in the Court of King's Bench, or by Commission of 
Oyer and Terminer in any part of England, for facts 
arising in Ireland, and that this arraignment there (he 
being never tried on it) was not sufficient to exempt him 
from being tried here.* He then desired time for his 
witnesses, which they told him he could not do till after 
plea pleaded, whereupon he pleaded not guilty, and put 
himself upon the country for his trial ; and after some 
consideration had about time to be allowed him to bring 
his witnesses from Ireland, the court appointed the day 
for his trial to be the first Wednesday in next term, which 
was full five weeks' time. 

" And accordingly, on Wednesday, the 8th of June, in 
Trinity term, he was brought to his trial, and proclamation, 
as in such cases is usual, being made, it proceeded thus :f 

" Clerk of Crown. Oliver Plunket, hold up thy hand. 
These good men which thou shalt hear called and per- 
sor ally appear are to pass between, etc. 

"Plunket. May it please your lordship: I have been 

* This was under a most iniquitous and unconstitutiona 1 act of the English Parliament, and 
its application in Dr. Plunket's case was peculiarly outrageous. To send him to be tried by a 
London jury of that day was to hand over the good prelate to enemies thirsting for his blood ; 
it was to procure credence for his perjured accusers, removing them from the country where 
their crimes and perjuries were known, and where Protestant juries had already refused 
credence to their sworn testimony It was also, in the existing circumstances, to deprive the 
accused of the probability of defence, and to oblige him to answer the highest charge against 
the crown before a court where there could be no witnesses in his favor, no evidence of his 
innocence. — Moran, p. 322. 

t The judges on the trial were the Lord Chief- Justice Sir Francis Pemberton and Judges 
Dolbein and Jones. According to the truly barbarous policy of the law in the seventeenth cen- 
tury, (and indeed the same law was in force till a very late period,) no person accused of treason 
was allowed the assistance of counsel, unless in the case that some purely legal question should 
arise during the trial. Hence Dr. Plunket now stood alone at the bar to plead his cause 
before judges who seemed to vie with each other in their partiality for the perjured witnesses, 
and in their animosity against the accused, while at the same time the jury had naught to 
guide them in their decision but the long-concocted, and nevertheless occasionally conflicting, 
evidence of these perjurers. One instance will show the bias of the judges. When, at the 
close of the first witness's evidence, Dr. Plunket asked him why, if all he had said were true, 
he had never during the past seven years given any notice to the government of the plot, the 
chief-justice, seeing this witness somewhat perplexed, suggested to him an answer, saying, 
" Of what religion were you then?" and the witness replying, "A Roman Catholic," Justice 
Dolbein at once added, " Therefore it will be no wonder you did not discover the plot." — 
Moran t p. 324. 



In the Reign of Charles IT. 395 

kept close prisoner for a long time — a year and a half — in 
prison. When I came from Ireland hither, I was told by 
persons of good repute, and a counsellor-at-law, that I could 
not be tried here ; and the reasons they gave me were that, 
first, the statute of Henry VIII. and all other statutes made 
here were not received in Ireland unless there were an ex- 
press mention made of Ireland in them : so that none were 
received there but such as were made before Poyning's Act. 
So I came with that persuasion that I could not be tried 
here, till, at my arraignment, your lordships told me it was 
not so, and that I must be tried here, though there was no 
express mention made of Ireland. Now, my lord, upon 
that, whereas my witnesses were in Ireland, and I knew 
nothing of it, and the records upon which I very much 
rely were in Ireland, your lordship was pleased to give me 
time from the 4th of the last month to this day ; and in 
the meantime, as your lordship had the affidavit here 
yesterday, and as Captain Richardson can testify, I have 
not despatched only one, but two, to Ireland, into the 
counties of Armagh, Dublin, etc., and where there were 
records very material to my defence ; but the clerk of the 
crown would not give me any copy of any record at all, 
unless he had some express order from your lordship ; so 
that, whether it were that they were mistaken or wilfully 
refused, I could not get the records, which were very 
material for me ; for in some of those records some of 
those that accuse me were convicted of high crimes, and 
others were outlawed and imprisoned and broke prison ; 
and there were other records also of excommunication 
against some of them, and I could not get the records 
unless your lordship would instruct me some way or other 
how I can get over them that are most material for my de- 
fence. The servants that I sent hence, and took shipping 
for Ireland were two days at sea, and cast back again, 
and from thence forced to go to Holyhead, and from 



396 Martyrs and Confessors 

Holyhead in going to Dublin they were thirteen or 
fourteen days, the winds were so contrary ; and then my 
servant went about to go into the county of Armagh and 
Derry, that were a hundred miles from Dublin, and Meath, 
and other places, so that in so short a time, my lord, it 
was morally impossible for them to have brought the 
witnesses over ; and those that were ready to have come 
would not stir at all unless they had a pass from hence, 
because some of them were Roman Catholics, and they 
had heard that here some were taken prisoners that were 
Roman Catholics, and that none ought to come without a 
pass ; and, they being witnesses against the king, they 
might be clapped up here, and brought into very ill con- 
dition ; so they sent one over that made affidavit. 

" Lord Chief- Justice. It was the affidavit was read here 
yesterday. 

" Plunket. So that, my lord, I conceive your lordship 
will think I did it not out of any intent to put off my trial, 
for Captain Richardson is here, who knows that I wrote 
by the post, and desired them to come with the packet- 
boat, and they wrote over to the captain after they were 
landed ; so that I depended upon the wind and weather 
for my witnesses, and wanted your lordship's order for the 
records to be brought over, and that their examination 
might be brought into court, and their own original exami- 
nation here might be compared with it. So I humbly beg 
your lordship's favor ; the case is rare, and scarce happens 
in five hundred years, that one should be in my circum- 
stances. I am come here, where no jury knows me nor 
the quality of my adversaries. If I had been in Ireland, I 
would have put myself upon my trial to-morrow, without 
witnesses, before any Protestant jury that knew them and 
me. And when the orders went over that I should be 
tried in Ireland, and that no Roman Catholics should be 
upon the jury, and so it was in both the grand and other 



In the Reign of Charles II 397 

jury, yet then when I came to my trial, after I was ar- 
raigned, not one appeared. This is manifest upon the re- 
cord, and can be proved. 

" Lord Chief- Justice. There was no prosecution of you 
there. 

" Plunket. But, my lord, here is no jury that knows me 
or the quality of my adversaries, for they are not a jury of* 
the neighborhood that know them,* and therefore my case 
is not the same with other cases. . . . Therefore I 
beseech your lordship that I may have time to bring my 
records and witnesses, and then I will defy all that is upon 
earth and under the earth to say anything against me. 

"Lord Chief -Justice. Look you, Mr. Plunket, 'tis in 
vain for you to talk and make this discourse here now. 
You must know that, by the laws of this kingdom, when a 
man is indicted and arraigned of treason or felony, 'tis not 
usual to give such time. 'Tis rare that any man hath had 
such time as you have had — five weeks' time — to provide 
your witnesses. If your witnesses are so cautious, and are 
such persons that they dare not or will not venture for fear 
of being apprehended, or will not come to England with- 
out such and such cautions, we cannot tell how to help 
it. . . . 

"Clerk of Crown. Oliver Plunket, hold up thy hand. 
You of the jury look at the prisoner and hearken to his 
charge : 

" He stands indicted by the name of Oliver Plunket, late 
of Westminster, in the county of Middlesex, doctor of di- 
vinity, for that he, as a false traitor against the most illus- 
trious and most excellent prince our sovereign lord Charles 
the Second, ... at Dublin, in the kingdom of Ireland, 
in parts beyond the seas, with divers other traitors un- 
known, traitorously did compass the death of the king. 

* The writ for summoning a jury runs, " shall summon twelve men of the neighborhood 
who best may know and judge." 



398 Martyrs and Confessors 

And to fulfil and accomplish his said most wicked treasons 
. . . did consult and agree our said sovereign lord the 
king that is now to death and final destruction to bring, 
. . . and the religion of the Romish Church into the king- 
dom of Ireland aforesaid to introduce and establish, etc. 

"Mr. Attorney-General. May it please your lordship, 
and you, gentlemen of the jury, the character this gentle- 
man bears, as primate under a foreign and usurped juris- 
diction, will be a great inducement to you to give credit to 
that evidence we shall produce before you." 

After the speech of the attorney-general, of which I 
have given the opening and most characteristic words, the 
witnesses were called. These were some apostate friars 
and bad priests whose evil doings Dr. Plunket had pun- 
ished, and one or two friends of theirs of similar character. 
Their character and history are fully traced by Dr. Moran. 

It would only weary my readers were I to recount the 
ridiculous tales they told of Dr. Plunket's connection with 
what they called the popish plot. According to them, 
this bishop (whose most private letters, now published, 
show he was incessantly occupied in the labors of his epis- 
copate, and could not obtain for himself a revenue of even 
near ^40 a year, and frequently received only £2$) rais- 
ed annually large sums for the support of a French army,* 
was to raise himself 70,000 men, and spent his time sur- 
veying the ports of Ireland for the purpose of a military 
landing, and kept 100 priests in his own house, when that 
house was a thatched cabin of two rooms, and when there 
were only sixty-two priests in the whole diocese of Ar- 
magh. The only witness who showed even ingenuity in 
concocting his tale was Moyer, an apostate Franciscan 
friar, who produced a paper — whether a letter or a copy of 

* They swore that for this purpose he raised forty shillings and fifty shillings a year from 
each priest, besides other sums, whereas in reality they were never able to pay the twenty 
shillings which they were bound to contribute for the archbishop's own support 



In the Reign of diaries II. 399 

the diocesan statutes is not clear — signed by Dr Plunket, 
in which it was ordered that ,£50 a year should be raised 
by the clergy of Ireland to support their ecclesiastical agent 
in Rome. Moyer had added a cipher, making the sum 
^500, and said the money was for the furthering of the 
plot. On reading the document, however, Mr. Justice 
Dolbein observed, " That is but negotia generally ;" and Dr. 
Plunket pointed out the real sum was only .£50. On which 
the chief-justice said, " Look you, Mr. Plunket, consider 
with yourself, ^50 or ^500 in this case is not five far- 
things difference, but the money was to be raised by your 
order." 

" Plunket. Ay, but whether it was not raised to this effect : 
there is never a nation where the Roman Catholic religion 
is professed but hath an agent for their spiritual affairs at 
Rome, and this was for the spiritual affairs of the clergy of 
Ireland." 

This was the only fragment of documentary or corrobo- 
rative evidence produced. Moyer, indeed, produced what 
he called a translation of a letter of the primate's, but the 
original was not produced, and the pretended translation 
was evidently a forgery. The other witnesses, when asked 
for the orders which they swore they had received from 
Dr. Plunket to raise money for the plot, answered that 
they had left them in Ireland, not thinking they would be 
asked for. But Titus Oates had proved that no fable was 
too gross for the credulity of that day, if only it were re- 
lated of papists.* Dr. Plunket's answer to these absurd 
charges could only consist, besides their own internal 
inconsistencies and extravagance, in proving the bad char- 
acter of the witnesses. But this he was not allowed to do. 

* The most complete proof of the utter groundlessness of all the allegations in reference to 
these pretended popish plots is the fact that, although all the most secret correspondence 
of the persons alleged to have taken part in or been cognizant of them has since been pub- 
lished, there is not a single allusion throughout which can be tortured into a reference to the 
great plot in which they were supposed to be engaged. 



400 Martyrs and Confessors 

We have seen already how the chief-justice met the na- 
tural question of why they did not reveal his pretended 
•■reason for so many years, or while he was in prison in 
Ireland, or on his trial at Dundalk, by the suggestion that 
they were Catholics, and that that would account for any- 
thing. But he protected the witnesses against the truth 
still further. 

" Dr. Plunket. My lord, to show what was part of the 
falling out, (of Friar Moyer with himself,) I would ask him if 
he was indicted of any crime and found guilty by a jury ? 

" Moyer. That was for discovering, for I discovered it 
before. 

" Plunket. My lord, he confesses he was convicted for 
giving powder and shot to the rebels. 

" Mr. Justice Dolbein. No ; he does not say so. Produce 
the record, if you have any of such thing.* 

" Mr. Sergeant Jeffries. Look you, Dr. Plunket, if you 
will ask him any questions that by law he is bound to 
answer, do it, of God's name ; we will not interpose. But 
if you ask him any questions that may tend to accuse him- 
self, we must tell you he is not bound to answer them. 

" Plunket. He hath been convicted and found guilty ; 
he will confess it himself. 

" Lord Chief-Justice. He is not bound to answer such 
a question.! Look you, Mr. Plunket, don't misspend your 
own time ; for the more you trifle in these things the less 
time you will have for your defence. I desire you now to 
consider, and well husband your time for your defence. 
What have you to say for yourself? 

* The judges had judicial knowledge that the Irish courts had refused to give copies of any 
records without an express order from themselves, (the Court of King's Bench in. England,) and 
they had noi given any such order. — Trial, p. 62. 

t This was not only manifestly unjust, but wholly illegal. A witness is not bound to 
criminate himself— that is, to confess a crime of which he has not been found guilty ; but he is 
bound to answer whether he has been convicted or not, for this does in no way endanger him. 
But the chief-justice would neither give an order for the production of the witnesses' convic* 
tions, nor allow them to be asked whether they had been convicted. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 40 1 

" Plunket. My lord, I tell you I have no way to defend 
myself, in that I was denied time to bring over my records 
and my witnesses, which were ten or twelve. And if I 
had them here, I would stand in defiance of all the world 
to accuse me ; but I have not sufficient time to bring over 
my records and my witnesses, and I am brought here from 
out of my native country. Were I in Ireland, there both I 
and they should be known ; but when I was to be tried 
there, they would not appear ; and it is false and only malice. 
These men used to call me Oliverns Cromwellns out of spite. 
. . . As to the first point, I answer that I never receiv- 
ed a farthing of money out of my own district ; and, but 
for my own livelihood — and that I can prove by those that 
have received it for me — that I never received over three- 
score pounds a year in my life, unless some gentleman 
would now and then give me ten shillings for my relief. 
For, my lord, th's is the way in Ireland : every priest hath 
so many families allotted to him, and every Catholic family 
gives two shillings a year, (as they that profess that way 
know,) and the priests give me, who am superior over them 
in my own district, some twenty shillings, some thirty 
shillings, and I never got so much in my life as to maintain 
a servant, and this was attested before the council in Ire- 
land ; . .' . and I never had above one servant, and the 
house I lived in was a little thatched house, wherein was 
only a little room for a library, which was not seven foot 
high, where once this fellow came to affront me, because I 
had hindered him from begging ; and that's for the money. 
. . . Your lordship sees how I am dealt with. First 
and foremost, I have not time to bring my witnesses, or 
my records, which if I had I would not weigh one farthing 
to leave my cause with any jury in the world. Besides all 
this, I am brought out of my own native country, where 
these men lived and I lived, and where my witnesses and 
records are, which would show what these people are. I 



402 Martyrs and Confessors 

sent by the post and did all that I could, and what can I 
say when I have not my witnesses against these people ? 
They may swear anything in the world ; you cannot but 
observe the improbability of the thing in itself, and unto 
what a condition I am brought. My lord, my life is in 
imminent danger, because I am brought out of my own 
country, where these people would not be believed against 
me. 

" Then the counsel for the crown spoke, and the chief- 
justice charged the jury bitterly against the prisoner, 
saying : 

" These things do seem to be very plain by the witness- 
es, that he himself hath taken a commission, or a grant,- or 
what you will please to call it, from the pope to be primate 
of Ireland, that he hath taken upon him to make laws as 
the provincial, and that he hath taken and endeavored to 
settle the popish religion in that kingdom, and in order to 
that he hath invited the aid of the French army. 

" Then the jury withdrew for a quarter of an hour, and 
being returned gave this verdict : 

" Clerk of the Crown. Oliver Plunket, hold up thy hand. 
How say you, is he guilty of high treason whereof he 
stands indicted, or not guilty ? 

" Foreman. Guilty. 

" Plunket. Deo gratias, God be thanked. 

" Then the verdict was recorded, and the court rose. 
And the keeper went away with his prisoner. 

"On Wednesday, the 15th June, 1681, Oliver Plunket 
was brought to the bar to receive judgment. 

"Mr. Attorney-General. My lord, I pray your judg- 
ment against the prisoner Oliver Plunket. 

" Clerk of the Crown. Oliver Plunket, hold up thy hand. 
Thou hast been indicted of high treason, thou hast been 
thereupon arraigned, thou hast thereunto pleaded not guilty, 
and for thy trial hast put thyself upon God and the country, 



In the Reign of Charles II. 403 

which country hath found thee guilty. What hast thou to 
say for thyself why judgment of death should not pass upon 
thee, and execution be thereupon awarded according to the 
law? 

" Plunket. My lord, may it please your lordship, I have 
something to say, which, if your lordship will consider se- 
riously, may occasion the court's commiseration and mercy. J 
I have, my lord, for this fact been arraigned in Ireland, 
and brought to my trial there. At the day of my trial all 
the witnesses voluntarily absented themselves, seeing I had 
records and witnesses to convince them evidently, and show 
what men they were, and the prepensed malice that they 
did bear to me, and so, finding that I could clear myself evi- 
dently, they absented themselves. On the day of my trial no 
Christian appeared, but hither over they come, and procure 
that I should be brought hither, where I could not have a 
jury that knew the qualities of my adversaries, or who knew 
me, or the circumstances of the places, times, and persons. 
The juries here, as I say, were altogether strangers to 
these affairs ; and so, my lord, they could not know many 
things that conduce to a fair trial ; and it was morally im- 
possible they should know it. I have been accused chief- 
ly for surveying the ports, for fixing upon Carlingford for 
the landing of the French, for the having of 70,000 men 
ready*to join with the French. "lis well known that in all 
the province of Ulster — take men, women, and children of 
the Roman Catholics — they could not make up 70,000. 
This a jury there, my lord, had known very well ; and, 
therefore, the laws of England, which are very favorable to 
the prisoner, have provided that there should be a jury of 
the place where the fact was committed, as Sir Thomas 
Gascoine, as I have heard, had a Yorkshire jury, though 
he was tried in London. And then, after my coming here, 
I was kept close prisoner for six months, nor any Chris- 
tian was permitted to come at rae, nor did I know any- 



404 Martyrs and Confessors 

thing how things stood in the world. I was brought here 
the 3d of May, to be arraigned, and I did petition your 
lordship to have some time for my trial, and I would 
have had it put off till Michaelmas ; but your lordship 
did not think fit to grant so long, but only till the 8th 
f of this month, when my witnesses, who were ready at 
the seaside, would not come over without passes ; and 
I could not get over the records without an order from 
hence, which records would have shown that some of 
the witnesses were indicted and found guilty of high 
crimes, some were imprisoned for robberies, and some 
of the witnesses were infamous people. So I petition- 
ed, the 8th of this month, that I might have time for 
twelve days more, but your lordship thought, when the 
motion was made, that it was only to put off my trial ; and 
now my witnesses are come to Coventry yesterday morn- 
ing, and they will be here in a few days ; and so, for want 
of time to defend myself in, I was exposed to my adversa- 
ries, who were some of my own clergy, whom, for their 
debauched lives, I have corrected, as is well known there. 
I will not deny myself but that, as long as there was any 
toleration and connivance, I did execute the function "of 
a bishop, and that, by the second of Elizabeth, is only a 
praemunire, and no treason. So that, my lord, I was ex- 
posed defenceless to my enemies, whereas now my wit- 
nesses are come that could make all appear. And, my 
lord, for those depositions of the 70,000 men, and the 
moneys that are collected of the clergy in Ireland, they 
cannot be true, for they are a poor clergy, that have no re- 
venue nor land ; they live as the Presbyterians do here. 
There is not a priest in all Ireland that hath, certainly of 
uncertainly, above threescore pounds a year ; and that I 
should collect of them forty shillings apiece for the raising 
of an army, or for the landing of the French at Carling- 
ford, if it had been brought before a jury in Ireland it 



In the Reign of Charles II. 405 

would have been thought a mere romance. If they had 
accused me of a prcemunire for the exercise of my episco- 
pal function, perhaps they had said something that might 
have been believed ; but, my lord, as I am a dying man, 
and hope for salvation by my Lord and Saviour, I am not 
guilty of one point of treason they have sworn against me, 
no more than the child that was born but yesterday. I 
have an attestation under my Lord of Essex's hand con- 
cerning my good behavior in Ireland ; and not only from 
him, but from my Lord Berkley, who was also governor 
there, which the king's attorney saw. But here I was 
brought, here I was tried, and, having not time to bring 
my witnesses, I could not prove my innocence, as other- 
wise I might. So that, if there be any case in the world 
that deserves compassion, surely my case does. And 'tis 
such a rare case, as I believe you will not find two of them 
in print, that one arraigned in Ireland should be tried here 
afterward for the same fact. My lord, if there be any- 
thing in the world that deserves pity, this does ; for I can 
say, as I hope for mercy, I was never guilty of any one 
point that they swore against me. And if my petition for 
time had been granted, I could have shown how all was 
prepense malice against me, and have produced all cir- 
cumstances that could make out the innocence of a person. 
But not having had time, and being tried, I am at your 
mercy. 

" Lord Chief -Justice. . . . You have done as much 
as you could to dishonor God in this case ; for the bottom 
of your treason was your setting up your false religion, than 
which there is not anything more displeasing to God or 
more pernicious to mankind in the world — a religion that 
is ten times worse than all the heathenish superstitions, the 
most dishonorable and derogatory to God and his glory of 
all religions or pretended religions whatsoever, for it un- 
dertakes to dispense with God's laws, and to pardon the 



406 Martyrs and Confessors 

breach of them. So that certainly a greater crime the.-e 
cannot be committed against God than for a man to en- 
deavor the propagation of that religion. ... 

" Plunket. How could any one foresee, unless he was 
Almighty God, that they would deny it, or that he could 
not get out a copy of a record, paying for it, without a pe- 
tition ? All the friends I had told me upon motion there 
it might be had ; but here I have it under the lieutenant's 
and council's hands that they would give no copy of re- 
cords without order from hence, which, before I could 
know' it, it was impossible for me to have them ready 
against my trial. . . . There were two friars and a 
priest whom I have endeavored to correct this seven years, 
and they were renegades from our religion, and declared 
apostates. . . . 

" May it please your lordship to give me leave to speak 
one word. If I were a man that had no care of my con- 
science in this matter, and did not think of God Almighty, 
or conscience, or heaven, or hell, I might have saved my 
life ; for I was offered it by divers people here, so I would 
but confess my own guilt and accuse others. But, my 
lord, I would rather die ten thousand deaths than wrong- 
fully accuse anybody. And the time will come when your 
lordship will see what these witnesses are that have come 
in against me. I do assure your lordship, if I were a man 
that had not good principles, I might easily have saved my 
own life, but I had rather die ten thousand deaths than 
wrongfully to take away one farthing of any man's goods, 
one day of his liberty, or one minute of his life. 

" Lord Chief -yustice. I am sorry to see you persist in 
the principles of that religion. 

" Plunket. They are those principles that God Almighty 
cannot dispense withal. 

"Lord Chief yustice. Well, however, the judgment 
which we give you is that which the law says and speaks. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 407 

And therefore you must go from hence to the place from 
whence you came — that is, to Newgate ; and from thence 
you shall be drawn through the city of London to Tyburn ; 
there you shall be hanged by the neck, but cut down be- 
fore you are dead, your bowels shall be taken out and burnt 
before your face, your head shall be cut off, and your body 
be divided into four quarters, to be disposed of as his ma- 
jesty pleases. And I pray to God have mercy on your 
soul. 

" Plunket. God Almighty bless your lordship. And 
now, my lord, as I am a dead man to this world, and as I 
hope for mercy in the other world, I was never guilty of 
any of the treasons laid to my charge, as you will hear in 
time ; and my character you may receive from my Lord- 
Chancellor of Ireland, my Lord Berkley, my Lord Essex, 
and the Duke of Ormond. 

" Then the keeper took away his prisoner, and, upon 
Friday, the 1st of July, he was executed according to the 
sentence." 

I shall now give the account of his execution from Dr. 
Moran : 

" Friday, the nth of July, 1681, was the day fixed for the 
execution ; and at an early hour Dr. Plunket was conducted 
from prison to the scaffold at Tyburn. The dauntless 
spirit which he displayed while awaiting in prison the car- 
rying out of the fatal sentence, and the heroic sanctity 
with which he disposed himself to receive the martyr's 
crown, belong rather to the next chapter ; for the present 
it will suffice to give some extracts from a manuscript nar- 
rative presented the same year to the Sacred Congregation, 
and which was not improbably written by Father Teyling, 
a distinguished member of the Society of Jesus. It is en- 
titled A Brief Narrative of the Imprisonment, Accusations, 
and Death of Monsignor Plunket, Archbishop of Armagh, 
a?td Primate of Ireland, executed at Tyburn, in London, 



408 Martyrs and Confessors 

the nth* of yuly, 1861. Many of the facts, however 
which it contains have already been commemorated from 
other sources, wherefore we shall be content with present- 
ing those passages which add new circumstances connect- 
ed with the imprisonment and death of our holy prelate. 

" The glorious death of this prelate, deserving of eternal 
memory, as well for his innocence as for the heroic con- 
stancy with which he supported his atrocious penalty, has 
awakened in many a devout curiosity to learn its circum- 
stances, and especially in those who will remember to have 
known and conversed with him in this city of Rome, where 
he lived for so many years, at first as student of the Irish 
college, and afterward as professor of theology for many 
years in the college of the Propaganda. Wherefore, not 
to defraud so holy a desire, while we await a more com- 
plete narrative of those facts, we shall here relate what is 
known for certain, partly from various letters, and partly 
from his own discourse, which may now be had in print in 
many languages. . . . 

" At the same time and place sentence of death was also 
passed against a certain Fitzharris, a man for many and 
heinous crimes deserving of that punishment ; this served 
to form a contrast with Dr. Plunket and add new lustre to 
his innocence. On the sentence of death being passed, 
Fitzharris, by the terror of his looks, his trembling, and 
the complete failure of strength, showed that his heart 
was not less feeble than guilty. On the contrary, the pri- 
mate, as well when awaiting the sentence as when it was 
being passed, and after it, displayed such a frankness of 
soul and heart, such a serene and joyous countenance, and 
was so composed in all his actions and deportment, that all 
were able to perceive, not only his perfect innocence, but, 
moreover, his singular virtue, which was master and supe- 
rior to every emotion of passion. And concerning all this 

* New style. In England they still observed old style. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 409 

the Catholics who were present wrote endless praises, at- 
testing that none could wish for a deportment more noble, 
more amiable, more worthy of Him whom he there repre- 
sented. Having heard the sentence, (turning his thoughts 
to his soul, and nowise solicitous as to the sufferings des- 
tined for his body,) he asked as a favor from the judge to be 
allowed to treat of spiritual matters with a Catholic priest. 
1 You will have,' replied the judge, 'a minister of the 
Church of England.' But he answered, ' I am obliged for 
your good intentions, but such a favor would be wholly 
useless to me.' 

" The primate being reconducted to prison after this pub- 
lic and so glorious trial, there arose between the Catho- 
lics and the Protestants an eager strife who would visit 
him and converse wit-h him — the former attracted by a 
singular devotion, the latter by an extraordinary curiosity ; 
and he, during the few days that he survived, received both 
with such courtesy, with such a sweetness, and calmness, 
and amiableness of manner, that the Catholics departed 
truly edified, and the Protestants were not only exceeding- 
ly contented with his deportment, but also rendered more 
affectionate toward the Cat-holies. Before his examination 
he was able to confer with a spiritual father, to whom he 
manifested, as that which most disturbed him, his having 
no horror of death, on account of which he feared that he 
was not well prepared for it, which shows his humility, and 
with what worthy sentiments he approached his death, as 
the only scruple which disturbed him was one derived 
from a special and excessive grace which God granted to 
him. On his part, he was nowise negligent in disposing 
himself for this great grace ; for, in addition to the suffer- 
ings of prison, to the afflicting journeys so patiently borne 
by him, to the generous and repeated pardon which he so 
often breathed for his enemies in exchange for their many 
outrages, he addect moreover, many voluntary penances, 



410 Martyrs and Confessors 

and especially a rigorous fast on bread and water three 
times each week during the whole time that he was in pri- 
son in London, as the keeper of the prison, a Protestant, 
attested after Dr. Plunket's death, not without eulogy and 
admiration. 

" At length, on the nth of July, the day- destined for the 
carrying out of the fatal sentence, the keeper of the prison, 
imagining that the apprehension of approaching death and 
horror of the atrocious punishment would have made some 
impression on that soul hitherto so resolute, went early in 
the morning to visit him, and, if necessary, to give him cou- 
rage and comfort him ; but he was yet more surprised and 
filled with astonishment on finding that the prelate, on 
being awakened, was as little moved by the approach of 
sufferings as though his body was insensible to pain, while, 
nevertheless, he was of an ardent and delicate tempera- 
ment. In a little while the announcement was made that 
everything was in order, wherefore he was taken from pri- 
son, and stretched (with his face uppermost) and tied with 
cords upon a wooden hurdle, and thus drawn by a horse to 
Tyburn. 

" It had been a hundred years, perhaps, since a Catholic 
bishop was executed there, and hence the curiosity to see 
a victim of such exalted dignity, and already so famed for 
his noble deportment, gathered together an immense mul- 
titude of spectators, who partly awaited him on the road- 
side, partly at the place of execution. Such as he had 
shown himself when receiving sentence of death did he now 
prove himself in this last scene when undergoing death it- 
self, being ever serene and tranquil even to his last breath ; 
so that he universally excited that esteem and sympathy 
which are invariably evoked by a heroic virtue oppressed 
by an extreme rigor, so that few could be found even 
among the Protestants to entertain a doubt as to his inno- 
cence. 



In the Reign of Charles II. 411 

" On the scaffold he delivered a short discourse, in which, 
after protesting his innocence as to the charges of conspi- 
racy made against him, he prayed for life and health to the 
king and all the royal family, gave a most complete pardon 
to all his enemies and adversaries, and, in fine, supplicated 
the Divine Majesty to be propitious to him, through the 
merits of Christ, through the intercession of the Blessec, 
Virgin and of all the holy angels and saints of paradise. 
Which form of prayer, so simple and yet so pious, was re- 
marked by the spectators, who never remembered to have 
heard from any other such an express mention of the 
Blessed Virgin and the saints. 

" This discourse was the substance of the longer one which 
he wrote with his own hand in prison, and left with his 
friends, lest any, by a malignant alteration, might seek to 
falsify his dying sentiments. Having concluded his dis- 
course, the sentence was carried into execution, and his 
happy soul sped its flight (as we may hope) to enjoy an 
eternal repose. 

" On the same day and in the same place Fitzharris was 
executed, and to the last the contrast of his manner and 
actions displayed in brighter light the happy lot of the pri- 
mate ; and while Dr. Plunket excited compassion on ac- 
count of his atrocious and unmerited suffering, and became 
universally loved for his innocence and extolled to the skies 
for his constancy, Fitzharris was abhorred for his wicked 
deeds, despised for his vile cowardice, and uncompassioned 
in his suffering, as being his due. 

" The primate, before death, asked and obtained permis- 
sion to be buried with the fathers of the Society of Jesus 
who during the present persecution sacrificed their lives at 
Tyburn. He was therefore interred with them in the 
church of St. Giles ; and we cannot but remark the devo- 
tion and great esteem which the English Catholics display- 
ed for this sacred deposit ; and together with it they in- 



412 Martyrs cmd Confessors 

terred a copper plate, on which was inscribed the following 
inscription : 

"' In this tomb resteth the body of the Most Rev. Oliver 
Plunket, late Archbishop of Armagh, and Primate of All 
Ireland, who, when accused of high treason, through hatred 
of the faith, by false brethren, and condemned to death, 
being hanged at Tyburn, and his bowels being taken out 
and cast into the fire, suffered martyrdom with constancy, 
in the reign of Charles II., King of Great Britain, on the 
1st day of July, 1681.'" 

Here we may remark that, by referring to this inscrip- 
tion, it is not our intention to ratify the title of martyr till 
the Holy Church will authenticate it ; as, also, we must add, 
that the aforesaid date is not contrary to that given above, 
as the ist of July, according to the old style, still used in 
England, is equivalent to the I ith of July according to our 
Gregorian computation. 

Some few circumstances yet remain, connected with the 
death of Dr. Plunket, which cannot be passed over in 
silence, and which we now add : 

I. It is deserving of attention, that all the accusers, 
judges, and other opponents of Dr. Plunket were not able 
to attach the mark of conspiracy to his cause, or conceal 
its being a manifest and direct cause of religion. The 
plots in England were pretended to be directed against the 
life of the king ; but neither the death of the king nor the 
advancement of any other cause could be put forward as 
the scope of the pretended Irish conspiracy, but only the 
establishment of the faith. 

2 It has been written that two English lords (who 
were successively viceroys in Ireland) declared to the 
king that it was impossible to believe or deem probable 
any of the accusations against the primate, for they had 
experienced in him a man full of zeal for the public peace 



In the Reign of Charles II. 413 

— nay, one of the most efficacious in Ireland in appeasing 
seditious movements. 

3. It is certain that, on the part of one of the first noble- 
men in England, his life was offered him should he consent 
to accuse others, which offer, although resolutely rejected 
by him, is said to have been renewed him on the scaffold, 
God permitting the temptation for the greater merit of one 
who thus in such innocence sacrificed his life. 

4. The superior of a certain religious order, a man of 
great prudence, who was present at the primate's death, 
writes that on the scaffold, by the singular composure of 
soul and actions, he seemed like an angel descended from 
paradise, who was joyously arrived at the moment of once 
more returning thither. 

5. All write, with one accord, that this innocent victim 
has done and yet performs great good in England, not only 
by the edification he gave to the Catholics, but, moreover, 
by the change of ideas and sentiments which he occasion- 
ed in many Protestants, who now commence to regard all 
these conspiracies as malicious fictions ; and there are 
great grounds for believing that the fruit which England 
will derive from his blood will not end here. The archbishop 
himself wrote from prison in London that he had ex- 
perienced in the English Catholics the most exalted piety, 
faith, and Christian charity which any one could desire ; 
and he gives the names of many families and individuals 
who, it seems, gave to him, though a stranger and unknown 
to them, large sums of money to enable his witnesses to 
come from Ireland, and offered themselves, moreover, as 
most ready to undergo any other expense or render him 
any service. He, therefore, in the letter referred to, pro- 
fesses an unspeakable love for those so bounteous bene- 
factors, and we may hope that as he has while living done so 
much by his example, so now he will be efficacious in 



414 Martyrs and Confessors 

obtaining from Heaven most abundant blessings for those 
by whom he deemed himself so benefited upon earth. 

Such were the glorious sentiments with which the arch- 
bishop encountered the barbarous sentence which had been 
unjustly decreed against him. None, even among his ene- 
mies, dared to insinuate his guilt or pretend that any 
deeds of conspiracy could be imputed to him. All felt the 
attractions of his innocence and sanctity, and could scarcely 
find words to express their admiration and esteem. Even 
among subsequent writers, no matter how ardent defenders 
they may have been of the Protestant cause, none have 
reproached his memory with the reputed guilt, but all have 
uniformly recorded his innocence of the charges thus 
made against him. We have already quoted the words of 
the Protestant Bishop Burnet, we may now add the testi- 
monies of some few others. Thus, for instance, Echard, in 
his History of England, after stating that Dr. Plunket had 
an attestation of his innocence under the hands of the two 
viceroys Essex and Berkeley, adds that he himself was. 

" Assured, by an unquestionable hand, that the Earl of 
Essex was so sensible of this good man's hardship that he 
generously applied to the king for a pardon, and told his 
majesty that these witnesses must needs be perjured, for 
these things sworn against him could not possibly be true. 
Upon which the king, in a passion, said, ' Why did you not 
attest this at his trial ? It might have done him good 
then. I dare not pardon any one.' And so concluded 
with the same kind of answer he had given another person 
formerly, ' His blood be upon your head, not upon mine.' " 

The continuation of Sir Richard Baker s Chronicle 
not only corroborates this fact relative to the Earl of Essex, 
but gives us the general Protestant sentiment of the time 
in regard to the perjured witnesses,. and the accusations 
which they brought against the primate. 

" In the meantime," he writes, " came on the trial of Dr. 



In the Reign of Charles II 415 

Oliver Plunket, popish titular Archbishop of Armagh, who 
called himself Primate of All Ireland. He was a worthy 
and good man, who, notwithstanding the title given him, 
was in a very mean state of life, as having nothing to sub- 
sist on but the contributions of a few poor clergy of his 
own religion in the province of Ulster, who, having little 
themselves, could not spare much to him. In these low 
circumstances he lived, though meanly, quietly and content- 
edly, meddling with nothing but the concerns of his func- 
tion, and dissuading all about him from entering into any 
turbulent or factious intrigues. But while the popish plot 
was warm, some lewd Irish priests and others of that na- 
tion, hearing then that England was disposed to hearken to 
good swearers, thought themselves well qualified for the 
employment, so they came over with an account of a plot 
in Ireland, and were well received by Lord Shaftesbury. 
They were also examined by the Parliament, and what they 
said was believed. They were very profligate wretches, 
and some of the priests among them had been censured by 
Plunket for their lewdness, so, partly out of revenge and 
partly to keep themselves in business, they charged a plot 
upon that innocent, quiet man, so that he was sent for and 
brought to trial. The evidences swore that, upon his being 
made Primate of Ireland, he engaged to raise sixty or sev- 
enty thousand Irish to be ready to join with the French to 
destroy the Protestant religion, and to get Dublin, London- 
derry, and all the seaports into their hands ; and that, be- 
sides the French army, there was a Spanish army to join 
them, and that the Irish clergy were to contribute to this 
design. Plunket, in his defence, alleged the improbability 
of all that was sworn against him, which was apparent 
enough. He alleged that the Irish clergy were so poo*" 
that he himself, who was the head of the whole province, 
lived in a little thatched house, with only one servant, hav- 
ing never above sixty pounds a year income, so that nei- 



416 Martyrs and Confessors 

ther he nor they could be thought very likely to carry on 
a design of this nature. But the fact being positively 
sworn against him, and the jury unacquainted with the wit- 
nesses' characters and the scene of action, he was brought 
in guilty and condemned. It is said that the Earl of 
Essex was so sensible of the injustice done to bim that he 
applied to the king for a pardon, and told him that the 
matters sworn against Plunket were so absurd in them- 
selves that it was impossible for them to be true. But the 
king answered, in a passion, 'Why did you not declare 
this, then, at the trial ? It would have done him some 
good then ; but I dare pardon nobody ;' and concluded by 
saying, ' His blood be upon your head, and not upon 
mine.'" 

With peace and calm Dr. Plunket prepared himself in 
prison to receive in a worthy manner the glorious privilege 
of dying for the faith with which God wished to crown his 
earthly labors. On the day after the final sentence had 
been passed against him he thus wrote to his friend and 
fellow-prisoner, Father Corker : 

" Dear Sir : I am obliged to you for the favor and chari- 
ty of the 20th, and for all your former benevolence ; and 
whereas I cannot in this country remunerate you, with 
God's grace I hope to be grateful to you in that kingdom 
which is our proper country. And truly God gave me, 
though unworthy of it, that grace to have fortem animnm 
mortis terrore carentem. I have many sins to answer for 
before the Supreme Judge of the high bench where no false 
witnesses can have an audience. But as for the bench 
yesterday, I am not guilty of any crime there objected to 
me. I would I could be so clear at the bench of the All- 
Powerful ! However, there is one comfort, that he cannot 
be deceived, because he is omniscient, and knows all se- 
crets, even of hearts ; and cannot deceive, because all good- 



7/2 thfi Reign of Charles II 417 

ness : so that I may be sure of a fair trial, and will get time 
sufficient to call witnesses — nay, the Judge will bring them 
in a moment, if there be need of any. Your and your com- 
rade's prayers will be powerful advocates at that bench ; 
here none are admitted for 

" Your affectionate friend, 

" Oliver Plunket." 

This composure of soul, and tranquil resignation to the 
will of God, is attested not only by the friends of the illus- 
trious primate, but also by Protestants who, perchance, 
had occasion to contemplate and admire his fortitude and 
heavenly deportment in prison. Sir Richard Bulstrode, 
for instance, attests that 

" Captain Richardson, keeper of Newgate, being asked 
by the lieutenant of the Tower how this prisoner behaved 
himself, he replied, ' Very well, for when I came to him 
this morning he was newly awake, having slept all night 
without any disturbance ; and when I told him he was to 
prepare for his execution he received the message with all 
quietness of mind, and went to the sledge as unconcerned 
as if he had been going to a wedding.' " 

In addition to the particulars of the closing scene of 
Tyburn, which we have already presented from the anony- 
mous narrative, we learn many further circumstances 
connected with Dr. Plunket's execution from the letter of 
the Archbishop of Cashel : 

"The 1st of July, (that is, the nth,) 1681, being at 
length arrived, this great bishop (Dr. Plunket) was brought 
to the place of execution destined for public malefactors, 
being placed upon a sledge trailed on the ground, and 
drawn by horses, and accompanied by a numerous guard 
of military, as well as by a multitude of spectators and royal 
officers ; and to all he gave occasion of surprise and edifica- 
tion, because he displayed such a serenity of countenance, 



418 Martyrs and Confessors 

such a tranquillity of mind and elevation of soul, that he 
seemed rather a spouse hastening 10 the nuptial feast than 
a culprit led forth to the scaffold. 

"Being arrived at the place of execution, he mounted a 
car which had been placed there on purpose, and delivered 
a discourse which lasted an hour, clearing himself of the 
accusations for which he suffered, calling God and the 
whole heavenly court to witness his innocence as to the 
pretended conspiracy, and declaring himself an unworthy 
Catholic prelate, who labored to preserve and advance the 
true faith in a just and lawful manner, and by no other 
means, and pardoning his accusers, the friars and their 
accomplices, the judges, and all who procured or concurred 
in his death ; and he delivered this discourse with such 
sweetness and energy that, it seems, he moved to compas- 
sion even his executioner, and much more so those who 
assisted as spectators. Having finished his address, he 
made a lengthened prayer to God, and passed to a better 
life, with a fortitude and spirit truly apostolic. 

" His discourse is everywhere to be met with in 
print, and was applauded even by the adversaries of our 
religion, who could not fail to admire, the singular courage 
and extol the many heroic acts of the pretended culprit, 
and to censure the manner of proceeding of the court, and 
the sentence pronounced against him ; the better part of 
them, and especially those of the province of Armagh, 
being well acquainted with and having ever esteemed the 
deceased prelate as a man of honor, while they knew his 
accusers to be wicked men, and their accusations incredi- 
ble." 

The discourse which he delivered from the scaffold, with 
as great calmness and energetic zeal as though he were ad- 
dressing from the pulpit his own immediate flock, moved 
all the assembled multitude, and even his executioner, to 
compassion ; and surely no one even nowadays can read 



In the Reign of Charles II. 419 

without emotion even the dead letters of the discourse, 
especially the concluding passages, in which he prays for- 
giveness to all his enemies, and supplicates from the 
Almighty pardon for his own faults and eternal rest in 
heaven. Dr. Plunket composed this discourse in prison, 
and left it to his friends, written with his own hand ; for he 
feared lest his dying words should be misrepresented, or 
any false sentiments be imputed to him. 

It was immediately printed, and translated into various 
languages. We give it in full, from the printed copy in 
the Archives of Propaganda : 

" I have, some few days past, abided my trial at the 
King's Bench, and now very soon I must hold up my 
hand at the King of kings' bench, and appear before a 
Judge who cannot be deceived by false witnesses or cor- 
rupt allegations, for he knoweth the secrets of hearts : 
neither can he deceive any, or give an unjust sentence, or 
be misled by respect of persons. He, being all goodness, 
and a most just Judge, will infallibly decree an eternal re- 
ward for all good works, and condign punishment for the 
smallest transgression against his commandments, which 
being a most certain and undoubted truth, it would be 
wicked and contrary to my eternal welfare that I should 
now, by declaring anything contrary to the truth, commit 
a detestable sin, for which, within a very short time, I 
must receive sentence of everlasting damnation, afte 1 " 
which there is no reprieve or hope of pardon. I will, there- 
fore, confess the truth without any equivocation, and make 
use of the words according to their accustomed significa- 
tion, assuring you, moreover, that I am of that certain 
persuasion that no power, not only upon earth, but also in 
heaven, can dispense with me, or give me leave to make a 
false protestation ; and I protest, upon the word of a dying 
man, that, as I hope for salvation at the hands of the Su- 
preme Judge, I will declare the naked truth with all can- 



420 Martyrs and Confessors 

dor and sincerity ; and that my affairs may be better 
known to all the world, it is to be observed that I 
have been accused, in Ireland, of treason and prcemimire, 
and that there I was arraigned and brought to my trial ; but 
the prosecutors, (men of flagitious and profligate lives,) per- 
ceiving that I had records and witnesses who would evidently 
convict them, and clearly show my innocency and their 
wickedness, they voluntarily absented themselves, and 
came to this city to procure that I should be brought hither 
to my trial. Here, after six months' close imprisonment, (or 
thereabout,) I was brought to the bar the 3d of May, 
and arraigned for a crime for which I was before arraigned 
in Ireland — a strange resolution, a rare fact, of which you 
shall hardly find a precedent these five hundred years past ; 
but, whereas my witnesses and records were in Ireland, the 
lord chief-justice gave me five weeks' time to get them 
brought hither ; but by reason of the uncertainty of the 
seas, of wind and weather, and the difficulty of getting 
copies «f records, and bringing witnesses from many coun- 
ties in Ireland, and many other impediments — of which 
affidavits were made — I could not at the end of five weeks 
get the records and witnesses brought hither. I there- 
fore begged for twelve days more, that I might be in a read- 
iness for my trial, which the lord chief-justice denied, and 
so I was brought to my trial, and exposed, as it were, with 
my hands tied, to those merciless perjurers, who did aim 
at my life by accusing me of these following points : 

" First. That I have sent letters by one Mat O'Neal 
(who was my page) to M. Baldeschi, the pope's secretary, 
to the Bishop of Aix, and to the Prince Colonna, that they 
might solicit foreign powers to invade Ireland ; and also 
to have sent letters to Cardinal Bouillon to the same 
effect. 

" Secondly. To have employed Captain Con O'Neal to 
the French king for succor. 



In the Reign of Charles II 421 

" Thirdly. To have levied and exacted money from the 
clergy of Ireland to bring in the French and to maintain 
70,000 men. 

" Fourthly. To have had in readiness 70,000 men, and 
lists made of them ; and to have given directions to one 
Friar Duffy to make a list of 250 men in the parish of 
Foghart, in the county of Louth. 

" Fifthly. To have surveyed all the forts and harbors 
in Ireland, and to have fixed upon Carlingford as a fit 
harbor for the French's landing. 

"Sixthly. To have had several councils and meetings 
where there was money allotted for introducing the French. 

" Finally. That I held a meeting in the county of Mo- 
naghan some ten or twelve years past, where there were 
300 gentlemen of three several counties, to wit, Monaghan, 
Cavan, and Armagh, whom I did exhort to take arms to 
recover their estates. 

"To the first, I answer that Mat O'Neal was never my 
page or servant, and that I never sent letter or letters by 
him to M. Baldeschi, or to the Bishop of Aix, or to the 
Prince Colonna ; and I say that the English translation of 
that pretended letter produced by the friar MacMoyer is a 
mere invention of his, and never penned by me, or its ori- 
ginal, in English, Latin, Italian, or any other language. I 
affirm, moreover, that I never wrote letter or letters to Car- 
dinal Bouillon, or any of the French king's ministers, nei- 
ther did any one who was in that court either speak to me 
or write to me, directly or indirectly, of any plot or conspi- 
racy against the king or country. Further, I vow that I 
never sent agent or agents to Rome or any other place 
about any civil or temporal affairs ; and it is well known (for 
it is a precept publicly printed) that clergymen (living where 
the government is not of Roman Catholics) are command- 
ed by Rome not to write to Rome concerning any civil or 
temporal affairs. And I do aver that I never received let- 



422 Martyrs and Confessors 

ter or letters from the pope, or from any of his ministers, 
making the least mention of any such matters, so that the 
friars MacMoyer and Duffy swore falsely as to such letter 
or letters, agent or agents. 

" To the second, I say that I never employed Captain 
Con O'Neal to the French king, or to any of his ministers ; 
and that I never wrote to him, or received letters from him ; 
and that I never saw him but once, nor ever spoke to him, 
to the best of my remembrance, ten words ; and as for his 
being in Charlemont or Dungannon, I never saw him in 
these towns, or knew of his being in these places ; so that 
as to Con O'Neal, Friar MacMoyer's depositions are most 
false. 

" To the third, I say that I never levied any money for a 
plot or conspiracy for bringing in the Spaniards or French, 
neither did I ever receive any on that account from priests 
or friars, as Priest MacClave and Friar Duffy most untruly 
asserted. I assure you I never received from any clergy- 
man in Ireland but what was due to me, by ancient custom, 
for my maintenance, and what my predecessors these hun- 
dred years were wont to receive ; nay, I received less than 
many of them. And if all that the Catholic clergy of Ire- 
land get in the year were put in one purse, it would signi- 
fy little or nothing to introduce the French, or to raise an 
army of 70,000 men, which I had enlisted and ready, as 
Friar MacMoyer most falsely deposed. Neither is it less 
untrue what Friar Duffy attested, namely, that I directed 
him to make a list of 250 men in the parish of Foghart, in 
the county of Louth. 

"To the fifth, I answer that I never surveyed all the 
ports or harbors of Ireland, and that I never was at Cork, 
Kinsale, Bantry, Youghal, Dungarvan, or Knockfergus ; 
and these thirty-six years past I was not at Limerick, Dun- 
gannon, or Wexford. As for Carlingford, I never was in it 
but once, and staid not in it above half an hour ; neither 



In the Reign of Charles II. 423 

did I consider the port or haven ; neither had I it in my 
thoughts or imagination to fix upon it, or any other port or 
haven, for landing of French or Spaniards ; and while I 
was at Carlingford (by mere chance passing that way) Friar 
Duffy was not in my company, as he most falsely swore. 

" To the sixth, I say that I never was at any meeting or 
council where there was mention made of allotting or col- 
lecting of money for a plot or conspiracy ; and it is well 
known that the Catholic clergy of Ireland, who have nei- 
ther lands nor revenues, and are hardly able to keep decent 
clothes on their backs and life and soul together, can raise 
no considerable sum — nay, cannot spare as much as would 
maintain half a regiment. 

" To the seventh, I answer that I never was at any meet- 
ing of 300 gentlemen in the county of Monaghan, of any 
gentlemen of the three counties of Monaghan, Armagh, 
and Cavan, nor of one county, nor of one barony ; and that 
I never exhorted gentleman or gentlemen, either there or 
in any other part of Ireland, to take arms for the recovering 
of their estates ; and it is well known that there are not, 
even in all the province of Ulster, 300 Irish Roman Catho- 
lics who had estates or lost estates by the late rebellion ; 
and, as it is well known, all my thoughts and desires were 
for the quiet of my country, and especially of that province. 

" Now, to be brief, as I hope for salvation, I never sent 
letter or letters, agent or agents, to pope, king, prince, or 
prelate, concerning any plot or conspiracy against my king 
or country. I never raised sum or sums of money, great 
or small, to maintain soldier or soldiers, all the days of my 
life. I never knew or heard (neither did it come to my 
thoughts or imagination) that the French were to land at 
Carlingford ; and I believe that there is none who saw 
Ireland, even in a map, but will think it a mere romance. 
I never knew of any plotters or conspirators in Ireland 
but such as were notorious or proclaimed (commonly called 



424 Martyrs and Confessors 

Tories) whom I did endeavor to suppress. And, as I 
hope for salvation, I always have been and am entirely 
innocent of the treasons laid to my charge, and of any 
other whatsoever. 

" And though I be not guilty of the crimes of which I 
am accused, yet I believe none came ever to this place in 
such a condition as I am ; for, if even I should acknowledge 
(which in conscience I cannot do, because I should belie 
mysell) the chief crimes laid to my charge, no wise man 
that knows Ireland would believe me. If I should confess 
that I was able to raise 70,000 men in the districts of 
which I had care, to wit, Ulster, nay, even in all Ireland, 
and to have levied and exacted moneys from the Catholic 
clergy for their maintenance, and to have proposed Car- 
lingford for the French's landing, all would but laugh at 
me, it being well known that all the revenues of Ireland, 
both spiritual and temporal, possessed by his majesty's 
subjects, are scarcely able to raise and maintain an army of 
70,000 men. If I will deny all these crimes, (as I did and 
do,) yet it may be that some who are not acquainted with 
the affairs of Ireland will not believe that my denial is 
grounded on truth, though I assert it with my last breath. 
I dare mention further, and affirm, that if these points of 
70,000 men, etc., had been sworn before any Protestant 
jury in Ireland, and had been even acknowledged by me at 
the bar, they would not believe me, no more than if it had 
been deposed and confessed by me that I had flown in the 
air from Dublin to Holyhead. 

" You see, therefore, what a condition I am in, and you 
have heard what protestations I have made of innocency, 
and I hope you will believe the words of a dying man. 
And, that you may be the more induced to give me credit, 
I assure you that a great peer sent me notice ' that he 
would save my life if I would accuse others ;' but I 
answered ' that I never knew of any conspirators in Ireland, 



In the Reign of Charles II. 425 

but such (as I said before) as were publicly known outlaws ; 
and that to save my life I would not falsely accuse any, 
nor prejudice my own soul. ' Quid prodest homini,' etc. 
To take away any man's life or goods wrongfully ill 
becometh any Christian, especially a man of my calling, 
being a clergyman of the Catholic Church, and also an 
unworthy prelate, which I do openly confess. Neither will 
I deny to have exercised in Ireland the functions of a 
Catholic prelate, as long as there was connivance or tolera- 
tion, and by preaching, and teaching, and statutes to have 
endeavored to bring the clergy (of which I had a care) to 
a due comportment, according to their calling ; and though 
thereby I did but my duty, yet some, who would not 
amend, had a prejudice for me, and especially my accusers, 
to whom I did endeavor to do good — I mean the clergymen, 
(as for the four laymen who appeared against me, namely, 
Florence MacMoyer, the two Neals, and Hanlon, I was 
never acquainted with them ;) but you see how I am 
requited, and how, by false oaths, they brought me to this 
untimely death, which wicked act, being a defect of 
persons, ought not to reflect on the Order of St. Francis, 
or on the Roman Catholic clergy, it being well known that 
there was a Judas among the twelve apostles, and a 
wicked man called Nicholas among the seven deacons ; 
and even as one of the said deacons, to wit, holy Stephen, 
did pray for those who stoned him, so do I for those who, 
with perjuries, spill my innocent blood, saying, as St. 
Stephen did, ' Lord, lay not this sin to them.' I do 
heartily forgive them, and also the judges who (by deny- 
ing me sufficient time to bring my records and witnesses 
from Ireland) did expose my life to evident danger. I do 
also forgive all those who had a hand in bringing me from 
Ireland to be tried here, where it was morally impossible 
for me to have a fair trial. I do, finally, forgive all who did 
concur, directly or indirectly, to take away my life ; and I 



426 ■ Martyrs and Confessors 

ask forgiveness of all those whom I ever offended by 
thought, word, or deed. I beseech the All-Powerful that 
his divine Majesty grant the king, the queen, and the 
Duke of York, and all the royal family, health, long life, and 
all prosperity in this world, and in the next everlasting 
felicity. 

" Now that I have shown sufficiently (as I think) how 
innocent I am of any plot or conspiracy, I would I were 
able, with the like truth, to clear myself of high crimes 
committed against the divine Majesty's commandments, 
(often transgressed by me,) for which I am sorry with all 
my heart ; and if I could or should live a thousand years, 
I have a firm resolution and a strong purpose, by your 
grace, O my God, never to offend you ; and I beseech your 
divine Majesty, by the merits of Christ, and by the inter- 
cession of his blessed Mother and all the holy angels and 
saints, to forgive me my sins, and to grant my soul eter- 
nal rest. ' Miserere mei, Deus,' etc. ' Parce animae,' etc. 
1 In manus tuas,' etc. Oliver Plunket. 

" To the final satisfaction of all persons who have the 
charity to believe the words of a dying man, I again de- 
clare before God, as I hope for salvation, what is contained 
in this paper is the plain and naked truth, without any 
equivocation, mental reservation, or secret evasion what- 
ever, taking the words in their usual sense and meaning, 
as Protestants do when they discourse with all candor and 
sincerity. To all which I have here subscribed my hand. 

" Oliver Plunket." 

Having concluded his discourse on the scaffold, the 
archbishop knelt in prayer, and, with eyes raised toward 
heaven, recited the psalm " Miserere mei, Deus," and many 
other devout prayers ; and, having breathed the aspiration, 
" In manus tuas, Domine, commendo spiritum meum," " In- 



In the Reign of Charles II. 427 

to thy hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit," the cart was 
drawn away, and while at the hands of the executioner he 
received the disgraceful punishment of a traitor, he yield- 
ed his happy soul into the hands of his Creator. 

Dr. Plunket was the last victim to the anti-Catholic fury 
with which the English nation was then inflamed ; and 
the next day, which witnessed the fall of Shaftesbury, and 
saw the arch-enemy of the Catholics conducted to the 
tower, saw also the very witnesses whom he had fostered 
employ their perjured tales to hurry on- his ruin. Many, 
indeed, even in after-years, were called to share in Dr. 
Plunket's crown, but never with the formalities of a trial, 
or with the public and direct sanction of the government. 
With him was closed the bright array of heroes of the 
faith who at Tyburn received the martyr's crown. The 
enemies of the Catholic Church had vainly hoped by shed- 
ding their blood to destroy the faith, but they forgot that 
the blood of martyrs is a fruitful seed — that the sword of 
persecution can only prune the vine and cause it to put 
forth new branches, and that the church of God is, indeed, 
the mystic field in which each grain cast into the earth 
buds forth remultiplied. 



RIGHT REV. PETER CREAGH, BISHOP OF CORK. 

" He was born in Limerick, and was descended from 
that family of the Creaghs distinguished by the name of 
Corrigeen. He was grandnephew to the most illustrious 
and famous Archbishop and Primate of Armagh, Richard 
Creagh, who died a martyr for the faith in the Tower of 
London during Queen Elizabeth's reign, and whose life I 
have given under the year 1585. In his youth our Pierse 
went to Poitiers, in France, where he was most carefully 
educated by his uncle, the Right Rev. Father Pierse Creagh 



428 Martyrs and Confessors 

of the Society of Jesus. From Poitiers he went to Rome in 
order to perfect himself in divinity, and in that study he 
acquired great honors under the protection of his other 
uncle, the Rev. Father in God John Creagh, who was a 
domestic prelate to Pope Alexander VIL, and on whose 
family the same pope conferred the title of duke, and gave 
an addition to their arms. After finishing his studies in 
Rome he received the order of priesthood, and then pre- 
pared himself for the mission of Ireland, which at that 
time stood greatly in need of zealous persons. Upon his 
arrival in Dublin he spared no pains or labor in confirming 
the Catholics in their faith, and in reclaiming to the church 
those whom interest and persecution had induced to aban-_ 
don it. In these and the like works of piety he employed 
himself for three years, when the clergy of Ireland judged 
him the properest person to be their agent for the mission 
at the court of Rome. He condescended to their desires, 
and for that purpose he repaired again to Rome, where he 
signalized himself in procuring all the advantages and 
possible relief for the mission of Ireland. 

" His zeal and assiduity herein were so conspicuous that 
Pope Clement X. took particular notice of him to be a fit 
person to fill the see of Cork, which was destitute of a 
pastor for twenty-six years before. Upon his arrival in 
his diocese he exerted himself in preaching, teaching, 
visiting it, and reforming the many abuses which had 
crept into it during the long time it was deprived of a 
bishop. He continued in this holy exercise until the time 
that Titus Oates laid the foundation of his pretended plot, 
which occasioned so much bloodshed in England.* But 



* Oates did not implicate Dr. Creagh in the alleged traitorous conspiracy. The only Irish 
prelates he accused were Dr. James Lynch, Archbishop of Tuam, whom he charged as being 
privy to the design of murdering King Charles II., the design being communicated to him at 
Madrid in August, 1677 ; and Dr. Peter Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, who was charged 
with employing four Jesuits, and, in their default, Dr. Fogarty, to murder Ormond, and with 
intending the massacre of all the Irish Protestants there, and a total overthrow of 



In the Reign of Charles II 429 

that the Protestants of Ireland may not be any way more 
backward than the English in promoting such wicked 
schemes, they encouraged the greatest villains they could 
find to swear there was likewise a plot forming in Ireland. 
In consequence of these false evidences, the Rev. Peter 
Talbot, Archbishop of Dublin, was imprisoned, and died 
with the hardships he suffered ; the Rev. Oliver Plunket, 
Primate of Armagh, was sent a prisoner to London, and 
was executed at Tyburn ; and a strict search was made 
after our Rev. Pierse Creagh, Bishop of Cork ; but he 
retired, and sought the woods and mountains for shelter. 
In these lonesome places he frequently assembled his 
clergy, and exhorted them to persevere and to be vigilant 
in their duty. The pursuit was so close after him, and as 
he three times escaped being taken, he thought proper to 
conceal himself more closely, and therefore did not stir 
abroad, but kept himself within doors in a house in the 
country. He continued here for two years, but at length 
was discovered by a neighboring Protestant, who informed 
the Protestant bishop thereof. Immediately a guard of 

the government Other reprobates started first in Ulster to accuse Oliver Plunket and 
Bishop Tyrrell. Their success invited a few in the South, as abandoned as themselves, to 
imitate their example. It was one David Fitzgerald, a Protestant of Rathkeale, that sought 
the life of Dr. Creagh. This nefarious villain, who styled himself esquire, was the tenant of a 
small farm from Sir Thomas Southwell, who distrained and impounded his cows for rent and 
long arrears. Fitzgerald broke open the pound and stole away the cattle. He had some 
time before been tried for treason and acquitted. But, apprehending the punishment of the 
law for this other offence, he resolved to secure himself, to retrieve his ruined circumstances, 
and wreak vengeance on his landlord, Sir Thomas, by a tale of treasonable conspiracy, more 
plausible, he thought, and better concacted than Oates's. It was, he saw, necessary and 
sufficient, to have any story of rebellion believed by the furious bigotry of that day, that popish 
bishops and priests should be the principal actors and contrivers. He therefore swore that he 
knew them to be hatching a conspiracy since 1652, and says : " About 1676, I saw Dr. Creagh, 
titular Bishop of Cork, who, as Dr. Stritch told me, was then newly come from France and 
Rome. Bishop Mullowny soon after told me that they had more information about it, (the 
foreign aid they were to receive by Dr. Creagh and others, lately arrived,) that the pope had 
already granted the dispensation from allegiance, and that France would faithfully perform its 
agreement." Again, he swore that he attended a meeting in the house of Dr. James Stritch, 
P.P. of Rathkeale, at which Dr. Creagh and the Bishops of Limerick and Killaloe, besides 
several priests and about twenty Catholic gentlemen, assisted, in order to give instructions to 
Dr. Hetherman, V. G. of Limerick, whom they despatched as their agent to France on that 
rebellious design. 



43° Martyrs and Confessors 

soldiers surrounded the house ; they burst open the door 
and led the bishop prisoner to Limerick, where he was 
lodged in jail. 

" He there continued for three months, and then an 
order came from the English Parliament that he should be 
transmitted to London, along with the Rev. Oliver Plun- 
ket, Archbishop of Armagh. He was conveyed to Dublin 
for that purpose, but, being there seized with a violent fit 
of sickness, occasioned by the hardships he suffered in jail, 
they would not transmit him to London along with the 
Archbishop of Armagh, and consequently our holy prelate 
was by this means robbed of the crown of martyrdom, 
which the blessed Primate of Armagh received there, and 
which his granduncle, Richard Creagh, of Armagh, receiv- 
ed there before from Queen Elizabeth. For the space of 
two years our bishop was kept a prisoner in Limerick and 
Dublin, during which time the eyes of King Charles II. 
began to be opened : he put to death many of those who 
before accused innocent Catholics ; he committed Oates 
to perpetual imprisonment, and restored to liberty the 
imprisoned Catholics, both priests and prelates. 

" Yet this could not be done without acquitting them 
according to the formality of the laws : our prelate, Pierse 
Creagh, was therefore conveyed to Cork to stand his trial. 
The judge was intent upon acquitting him, and one of the 
witnesses against him repented of his crime ; but there 
was another witness who was hardened in wickedness, and 
was resolved to prosecute him with all his might. Our 
poor prelate was as a criminal seated at the bar, patiently 
listening to many lies and calumnies which the wicked fel- 
low was laying to his charge. But just as this villain had 
kissed the book, and called for the vengeance of Heaven to 
fall down upon him, if what he swore to was not true, the 
whole floor of the court-house gave way, and, with all the 
people upon it, tumbled down into the cellar, and the 



In the Reign of Charles II 431 

rogue was crushed to death in the ruins. The other false 
witnesses who were at hand immediately fled, and none 
escaped falling down with the floor except the judge, 
whose seat was supported by an iron bar, and our prelate, 
whose chair happened to be placed on a beam which did 
not give way, and there he continued sitting as it were in 
the air. The judge cried out that Heaven itself acquitted 
him, and therefore dismissed him with great honors. 
But, that perjured villains should not go unpunished, the 
judge next day got them apprehended, and was going to 
put the penal laws in force against them for their perjury, 
but our holy bishop prostrated himself on his knees before 
him, and, with tears in his eyes, begged the judge to par- 
don them ; and it was with great difficulty that the judge, 
who was greatly incensed against them, condescended to 
his charitable request. 

" After this our holy prelate continued in peace in his 
diocese, and when King James II. came to the throne he 
exerted himself in establishing the Catholic faith, in erect- 
ing altars, in filling the parishes with worthy pastors, and 
in encouraging religious people to fix themselves all over 
his diocese. But this sunshine of religion was but of short 
duration ; for King James being expelled the throne by his 
son-in-law, the Protestant religion again became superior, 
and bloody wars were kindled in Ireland. The Catholic 
party made choice of our prelate to go as an ambassador 
from them to Louis XIV., to crave his assistance. His 
errand was attended with the desired success ; and when 
he was upon his return to Ireland he was stopped at St. 
Germain's by King James, who presented him to the arch- 
bishopric of Dublin, but would not permit him to come to 
Ireland or quit his own person. The Bishop of Stras- 
bourg, having a particular regard and liking for him, beg- 
ged of King James to suffer him to go with him to Stras- 



43 2 Martyrs and Confessors 

bourg, in order to assist him in his diocese.* The king 
condescended to his request, and our holy prelate con- 
tinued at Strasbourg, exercising all episcopal functions 
and duties, and leading a most exemplary life, until the 
month of July, 1705, when he made a most happy end; 
his remains were there buried, and a sumptuous monu- 
ment erected over him. One Father Baltus, of the 
Society of Jesus, preached his funeral oration, and it was 
out of this that I extracted the above particulars of the life 
of this holy prelate." — (Thus Rev. James White ;) Renehan, 
Bishops, p. 238. 



Anno 1691. 

REV. GERALD GIBBON, O.P.P. 

" He studied in Spain, and on his return to Ireland was 
elected sub-prior of the convent of Kilmallock. He 
managed the resources of the convent so prudently that 
he provided for the sustenance of fifteen religious. This 
good man was met by the enemy in the county of Kerry, 
and slain by them in the village of Listuahil, in the year 
1691."!— O'Heyn, p. 18. 

* August 20th, 1703. The nuncio in Paris writes to Cardinal Paulucci at Rome, saying 
that the Archbishop of Dublin had arrived at Paris, and requested him to transmit the an- 
nexed memorial to the Holy See ; that he learned from the queen that Dr. Creagh was a 
man deserving much respect, not only on account of his dignity, but also personally estimable, 
having shown great prudence and zeal in the government of his church ; that he was now, 
however, reduced to great distress by a stroke of apoplexy, which deprived him of speech to 
some extent. The memorial sets forth that the archbishop, after having labored more than 
twenty years in the Irish Mission, was obliged, like other prelates, to fly to France, where tie 
had been a long time destitute of benefice or patrimony ; that the French king, informed of 
his sufferings and poverty, at the request of the English queen, reserved to him a pension' 
of 1500 livres in the Benedictine Abbey of Mormontier. But as that abbey requires no bulls 
of provision, being entirely dependent on the bishop, the pension cannot be mentioned in a bull 
as is usual on such occasions, and therefore the archbishop prays the nuncio to obtain for him 
a brief, or at least the tacit consent of the pope, authorizing him, out of respect for his charac- 
ter, his sufferings, feeble health, and destitute condition, to enjoy that pension, which his con- 
science could not allow him to accept merely by virtue of a decree in council, as others do in 
France, when bulls are refused. — Theiner MSS. 

t This must have been a roving party of Williamite horse who met the good priest 



In the Reign of William III. 433 

Anno 1692. 

MOST REV. PATRICK RUSSELL, ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. 

Patrick Russell, son of James Russell, of Rush, 
county Dublin, was born in that parish in the year 1629. 
Of his early years, student life, and labors as a priest we 
know hardly anything beyond what may be learned by 
conjecture and our general acquaintance with the times 
and his subsequent career. 

Dr. Russell was elected Archbishop of Dublin on the 
2d August, 1683. He had to endure at first all the 
hostility of the bigoted faction that deprived his predeces- 
sor, Dr. Talbot, of life and liberty. They watched every 
movement closely, and sought every opportunity to accuse 
him of violating the law. In these circumstances the 
public exercise of his ministry would be attended with the 
greatest risk, and hence his time was chiefly occupied in 
the performance of those duties less likely to attract notice 
and expose him to danger. Notwithstanding this caution 
and anxiety to avoid giving offence, from time to time his 
enemies became more furious and intolerant ; their worst 
passions were excited by some fresh calumny against the 
Catholics and their religious principles. On these occa- 
sions the archbishop generally retired for awhile to his 
native parish and lay concealed there in the house of a 
kinsman, Geoffrey Russell, until the storm that threatened 
him blew over. These visits were long remembered in 
the village of Rush, and are still spoken of by pious persons 
there as the most remarkable event in their annals. 

But a great and unexpected change soon took place, 
which for a time almost restored the Catholic religion to 
its former splendor. After Charles II. had given the 
strongest proof of the sincerity of his early conversion, by 
dying in communion with the church, and his brother, 



434 Martyrs and Confessors 

James II., who never disguised his religious convictions, 
ascended the throne of England, apparently with the 
fullest approbation of his Protestant subjects, no one could 
think of enforcing the penal laws, though they still remain- 
ed on the statute-book, or of interfering with the public and 
free exercise of the Catholic religion. 

The new king, it was well known, was too warmly 
attached to his creed to permit insult or injury to those 
who embraced it ; his zeal, indeed, required to be checked 
rather than stimulated. The fullest liberty was given the 
Irish bishops to meet in council, and to direct their energies 
to useful legislation. Dr. Russell availed himself at once 
of this favorable opportunity, and convened a provincial 
synod on the 24th of July, 1685, to reform the abuses which 
crept in during a long period of religious persecutions, 
when it was impossible for the pastors of the church to 
assemble together. One law then sanctioned deserves to be 
specially noticed just now, when a cry of innovation has 
been substituted for the old charge of traditional dogmatism, 
because it proves how ancient and how widely diffused and 
how sincere is the devotion to the Immaculate Conception 
in the Irish Church. The festival of the Blessed Virgin 
Mary, commemorative of her exemption from original sin, 
was ordered to be celebrated throughout the province as a 
holyday of strict obligation. 

Another provincial synod was held on the 1st of August, 
1688, at which Dr. Russell and Dr. Phelan assisted, with 
the Vicars-General of Kildare, Leighlin, and Ferns, and 
James Russell and Edward Murphy. 

We have also still extant the acts of three diocesan 
synods of Dublin during Dr. Russell's administration — the 
first on June 10th. 1686 ; the second, May 9th, 1688 ; and 
the third, April 4th, 1689 — which prescribe very minutely 
the duties of the clergy and faithful, and evince a know- 
ledge of the requirement of church discipline worthy of 



In the Reign of William III 435 

better times. Although this close attention to the reli- 
gious wants of his own diocese occupied necessarily much 
of Dr. Russell's time, he warmly supported the efforts of 
others to promote the general welfare. He signed the 
petition presented by the bishops of Ireland to the king, July 
2 1st, 1685, praying him to confer on Tyrconnell the 
necessary authority for protecting them in the free ex- 
ercise of their ministry ; and he took a most active part in 
convening the assembly in which the primate, Dr. Ma- 
guire, and Patrick Tyrrell, Bishop of Clogher, were appoint- 
ed delegates to wait on his majesty, and to suggest the 
best means of securing religious freedom. King James 
received the prelates most graciously, and ordered the Earl 
of Sunderland, Chief Secretary of State, to write to Lord 
Clarendon, the Viceroy, recommending the said archbishop, 
the Bishop of Clogher, and the rest of his brethren, to his 
excellency, " for his patronage and protection upon all 
occasions wherein they should apply to him or stand in 
need thereof." The king himself wrote to Dr. Maguire, 
acquainting him that he had ordered certain sums of 
money to be paid out of the exchequer in Ireland — .£300 
per annum for his own use, ^"200 per annum to Dr. 
Russell, and like pensions to the other Catholic bishops. 
These concessions, which to us appear so insignificant, but 
were in reality valuable benefits when compared with the 
grievances of the Catholics before the accession of James, 
and again under his successor, are to be ascribed to Dr. 
Russell's zeal and influence. Indeed, but for the wisdom 
with which he directed the councils of his brethren, many 
important changes, deeply affecting the interests of reli- 
gion, would never have been made in his time. 

One act of the archbishop's public ministry remains to 
be noticed here. This was the consecration of the church 
of the Benedictine nuns in Channel Row, Dublin, June 6th, 
1689, which seems to have been performed with unusual 



43 6 Martyrs and Confessors 

pomp and splendor: King James, who had only a few 
months before arrived in Ireland, attended with his court, 
and a vast concourse, who welcomed his majesty with a 
kind of religious enthusiasm. It was the first time for 
ages that an English king took part in such a ceremony. 
Soon after followed in quick succession the battle of the 
Boyne, the defeat and shameful flight of James, the taking 
of Athlone, the victory of Aughrim, the siege and treaty 
of Limerick, the submission of the Irish to the Prince of 
Orange, and the departure of the native troops for France. 

No one of the Irish prelates, it would seem, felt the 
consequences of this change sooner than Dr. Russell. It 
was probably remembered to him that he had the honor of 
officiating in the presence of the deposed king, not only on 
the occasion alluded to here, but also at other times. Strong 
fears were entertained of his fidelity, and his position in the 
church tended to increase them. He was accordingly 
seized, in the very beginning of William's reign, and cast 
into prison, where he remained almost without interruption 
to the time of his death. In an interesting letter from 
Francis, Archbishop of Rhodi, and nuncio at Paris, to 
Cardinal Spada, December 31st, 1690, it is stated that 
King James was then at Brest, " examining the state of 
all those who had already come over from Ireland, amount* 
ing to about 15,000, of whom about 700 were women and 
400 or 500 children. Among the exiles are the Arch- 
bishops of Armagh and Tuam, and the Bishops of ' Cluan' 
and Elphin. The Archbishop of Cashel and the Bishop 
of Kildare, both of whom were at Limerick, and the Bishop 
of Ossory, are supposed to be still in Ireland So is also 
the Archbishop of Dublin, now a long time in jail? 

The fullest information on Dr. Russell's imprisonment 
and death is left to us by Dr. James Lynch, Archbishop 
l of Tuam, in an eloquent letter addressed to the Cardinal- 
Prefect of Propaganda, and dated Paris, October 28th, 1692, 



In the Reign of William III. 437 

Since his departure from Ireland, he says, many pious ec- 
clesiastics, among others the Bishops of Meath and Ferns 
and the Archbishop of Dublin, have suffered death at the 
hands of their enemies. " The Archbishop of Dublin re- 
mained as much as possible in his diocese, but, finding 
that he could not conceal himself in the city or escape the 
snares of heretics, he retired to his friends in the country 
and lay hidden for some time in caves and caverns, or wan- 
dered through the woods and mountains. He was at 
length detected, conveyed to Dublin, and cast into a loath- 
some prison, where he endured repeated insults, much 
misery and hardship. On one occasion, indeed, he was 
liberated on giving bail to appear when called on. But of 
what use this brief respite ? The same tortures were re- 
peated again ; guards were set to watch him in a filthy 
underground prison-cell, until, worn out with heavy afflic- 
tions, this faithful servant was called to his Master, to en- 
joy the reward of so much labor. The Archbishop of Dub- 
lin is now two months dead. God grant he may have a 
successor who will imitate his piety, and show the same 
zeal in his ministry." 

By the " two months " Dr. Lynch may have understood 
the interval from the end of July, in which the death took 
place, to the beginning of October, in which the letter was 
written ; or he may have reckoned from the time the in- 
telligence reached him. The error in any case is very 
slight, the true date of Dr. Russell's death being the 14th 
July, 1692, as appears from the coffin-plate, now in the 
possession of the venerable parish priest of Rush, the Very 
Rev. A. Fagan. — Reneharis Collections. 



Anno 1698. 

The surrender of Limerick left William the acknow- 
ledged king of Great Britain and Ireland, but the terms of 



43 8 Martyrs and Confessors 

capitulation, or treaty of Limerick, guaranteed to the Irish 
Catholics, then in arms, liberty of conscience. This was, 
however, soon violated by the enactment of the penal laws. 
The first of these was enacted in 1697, after the Peace of 
Ryswick had freed William from the embarrassment of a 
continental war. In this year an act was passed " for ban- 
ishing all papists exercising any ecclesiastical jurisdiction 
whatever in Ireland before the 1st May, 1698, and if found 
there after that date to be imprisoned during pleasure with- 
out bail, and then transported for life ; that in the mean- 
time no archbishop, bishop, vicar, etc., should ever land in 
Ireland from abroad, after the 29th December, 1697, under 
pain of a year's incarceration and then perpetual banish- 
ment ; and that, if any archbishop, etc., should in either 
case return from banishment, he should be judged guilty of 
high treason, and die the death of a traitor." Moreover, 
harboring or concealing them was punishable by a fine 
of ^20 for the first offence, ^40 for the second, and con- 
fiscation of all estates and chattels for the third, the fines 
to be divided, one half to the informer, and one half to the 
king. 

Under these inhuman laws, nearly every bishop, and 
most of the regular clergy in Ireland, were either deport- 
ed out of the country or obliged to seek safety in flight. 
Among these were Dr. Dominick Maguire, Archbishop 
of Armagh, the Archbishops of Dublin and Tuam, the 
Bishops of Ossory and Elphin. According to Captain 
South's account of the 495 regulars then known to be em- 
ployed in Ireland, 424 were shipped off this year — namely, 
153 from Dublin, 190 from Galway, 75 from Cork, and 26 
from Waterford. The secular clergy, said to be 892 in 
number, were obliged by their office to remain with their 
flock at all hazards. The Archbishop of Cashel, Dr. Com- 
erford, courageously braved the terrors of death rather 
than leave the whole Irish Church without a bishop. In 



In the Reign of William III. 439 

1701, Dr. Comerford tells the Secretary of Propaganda 
there were only three or four bishops still in Ireland. 
These were Dr. Comerford himself, (etait fort age,) Dr. 
Donelly, of Dromore, (etait en prison,) and, perhaps, the 
Bishop of Clonfert. — RcneJums Collections, pp. 84, 301 ; 
Daltous Archbishops of Dublin, p. 458. 



REV. FATHER JAMES O'F^LAIN, (ANGLICE, FULLAM,) O.P.P. 

" He completed his studies in Portugal, and lived in 
the convent of Dublin, an example and a service to the 
house, for he was a prudent and provident procurator ; he 
was several times sub-prior of the same house ; he was 
always head of the confraternity of the Holy Rosary, and 
taught and instructed the associates, which office he 
executed with great satisfaction to all. When the kingdom 
was conquered, he was obliged to flee across the seas, and 
being taken at sea by the English, was carried to London, 
where he endured want and all the hardships of prison for 
two years. At length, by good fortune, he obtained his 
liberty ; he made his way to France, and dwelt for some 
years at Abbeville. He made every possible effort to 
return to his country, and was again thrown into prison in 
England for a year, and when set at liberty returned to 
Belgium, where he was made chaplain to the regiment of the 
Duke of Berwick, where, serving faithfully, he was slain in 
a battle in the Milanese, between Prince Eugene of Savoy 
and the Duke of Vendome, in the year 1705." — G Heyn, 
p. 7. # 

REV. FATHERS DANIEL MACDONEL AND FLEMING, O.P.P. 

" In the same convent of Urlar, in the county Mayo, 
there lived Father Daniel MacDonel, who had studied in 
Portugal, and on his return to his native land lived con- 



440 Martyrs and Confessors 

tinually in his convent until the late expulsion of priests. 
He returned to Ireland out of France, and being detected 
as a religious in the ship, while yet it was at anchor, he 
was thrown into prison with Father F]eming, whom I 
have spoken of before, and was kept there for fourteen 
months with gyves on his feet. He was then sent back to 
France, but, again attempting to return, landed at Galway, 
where he was immediately made prisoner, and has now 
(1706) been nearly six years in prison, without any present 
hope of release." — OHeyn, p. 39. 



REV. WALTER FLEMING, O.P.P., 

Was one of the regulars transported beyond the seas, as 
we learn from De Burgo, who says : 

" He was sent into exile in the same ship with myself,* 
and landed in France. After a year he returned to Ire- 
land, but, being seized before he landed from the ship, was 
thrown into prison in Cork, where he remained with a 
companion for nearly a year in iron fetters. He was sent 
back to France and fell ill at sea, and lay sick for a long 
time in an inn at Nantes, where, having piously received 
the sacraments, he died at an advanced age, in the year 
1 70 1." — Hib. Dom. p. 504. 



Anno 1702. 

REV. JOHN MORROGH, O.P.P. 

" There died in this year, after the last exile, Father 
John O'Moraghuadh, (commonly Morrogh,) a good man 
who had been frequently prior of the convent of Cork and 
elsewhere. He died in prison, where he had been detain- 

* In 1698, Father O'Heyn, the writer, was, on the 17th June, forced to embark, with 126 
other religious, on board a ship at Galway, and sent out of the kingdom. 



In the Reigji of Anne. 441 

ed four years, for he was unable from gout to fly." — 
OHeyn, p. 13. 

Anno 1704. 

REV. CLEMENT O'COLGAN, O.P.P. 

" He studied with credit in Spain. Returning to his 
native land, he lived piously in his convent of Derry, and 
preached fervently and well until the conquest of the 
kingdom in the year 1691, when he crossed into France. 
Hence he proceeded to Rome, and taught philosophy in 
the convent of St. Sixtus, and afterward returned to 
Ireland. Being taken by the heretics, he endured two 
years' imprisonment in the city of Derry, and died for the 
faith in the same prison, in the year 1704." 



JLnno 1706. 

REV. JOHN MAGLAINN, NICHOLAS BLAKE, AND 
GREGORY FRENCH, O.P.P. 

" One of these was Father John Maglainn, who has now 
been in prison at Limerick for ten years on account of the 
conversion of a heretic to the faith. 

"There yet live, (1706,) of the fathers of the convent of 
Galway, Father Nicholas Blake, who was a distinguished 
student and monk at Louvain. When he had completed 
his studies, he returned to Ireland, and chose the convent 
of Galway for his residence, where he dwelt among his 
relatives and fellow-citizens, esteemed for his piety and 
observance of the rule. When driven into exile, he came 
to Nantes, and thence returned to Galway, where now for 
five years he lies by day in some hiding-place, and at 
night visits the faithful. Truly I fear lest he be now in 
prison, because the heretics are taking extraordinary pains 
this year in hunting down the religious. 



44 2 Martyrs and Confessors 

" Father Gregory French, of the same convent, studied 
at Madrid, in the convent of the Blessed Virgin of Atocha. 
Returning to his country, he was after some years made 
prior of his convent. Driven into exile, he lived for two 
years at Nantes, and returning from thence to Ireland, he 
was at once thrown into prison, where he lay for a year 
and a half; but at the solicitation of his brother he was 
allowed, on giving heavy bail, to live with this brother. 

" The Rev. Father Peter Furlong, of the convent of 
Athenry, is now, 1706, three years in prison in England." 
— O'Heyn, pp. 27, 36. 



REV. LAURENCE O'FERRALL, O.P.P. 

" He was an alumnus of the convent of Longford, and 
studied at Prague, "in Bohemia, but read his philosophy in 
Rome with the Irish Dominicans in the convent of Saints 
Sixtus and Clement, and theology with the English 
Dominicans in the house of Saints John and Paul. He 
thence proceeded to England, and while discharging the 
duties of an apostolic missionary was seized and confined 
in a most strict prison in London, where he suffered much 
for more than a year. At length by the favor of God he 
was set free, and proceeded to Belgium, where he patient- 
ly bore a long illness. Again he returned to England, 
and was again imprisoned, but was sent as a German into 
Portugal with the Archduke Charles, afterward Emperor 
of the Romans. From thence he took an opportunity of 
going to Spain, where he piously died, serving as a 
chaplain to Berwick's regiment, in 1708." — Hib. Dom. p 
586. 



In the Reign of Anne. 443 



Anno 1710. 

In 1704, all the secular priests in Ireland, not bishops or 
other dignitaries, were ordered to register themselves, and 
were promised protection if they complied. In 1709, an 
act had been passed, offering a reward of ^50 for the arrest 
of a bishop or vicar-general and ^20 for a friar. What 
rendered this bribe peculiarly grievous was that the money 
was to be levied on the Catholics of the county in which 
the ecclesiastic was convicted. In 17 10, the real object of 
the Registration Act of 1704 was made manifest; for it 
was enacted that before the 25th March, 1710, every register- 
ed priest should present himself at the quarter sessions and 
take the oath of abjuration, under the penalty of transporta- 
tion for life, and of a traitor's death if he returned. By 
the oath of abjuration the priest was ordered to swear that 
the sacrifice of the Mass and the invocation of the saints 
were damnable and idolatrous. In other words, the priest, 
who had been induced to register under the promise of 
protection, was called upon to apostatize, under the 
penalty of transportation for life, and a bribe of ^30 a year 
for life was offered to any priest who would apostatize. 
The priest- hunters were now called into full activity, and 
for some thirty years pursued their infernal trade in full 
force. Each of these wretches had under him an infamous 
corps, designated priest-hotcnds, whose duty was to track, 
with the untiring scent of the bloodhound, the humble 
priest from refuge to refuge. In cities and towns the 
Catholic clergy were concealed in cellars or garrets, and 
in the country districts they were hid in the unfrequented 
caves, in the lonely woods, or in the huts of the faithful 
Irish peasantry. De Burgo tells us that this persecution 
and hunting after priests was most bitter toward the close 
of the reign of Anne and the commencement of George I. ; 
and he says that none would have escaped were it not for 



444 Martyrs and Confessors 

the horror in which priest-catchers were held by the people. 
He adds, moreover, and it is a pleasing reminiscence, that 
so odious and detestable were these priest-hunters and 
informers in the eyes of the honest Protestants of Dublin, 
that, when any of the wretches made their appearance in 
public, both Protestants and Catholics rushed forth to stone 
them in the streets, amidst shouts and groans of execra- 
tion.* 

Instances of this persecution will be given under the 
years 171 8 and 1737. 



Anno 1712. 

J 

THE FRANCISCAN NUNS OF GALWAY 

In 1 71 2, when Edward Eyre, Mayor of Gal way, was 
directed to suppress the nunneries in that town, " Dr. John 
Burke, then provincial of the Franciscans in Ireland, of 
which order the nuns were, obtained permission from Dr. 
Edmund Byrne, titular Archbishop of Dublin, to admit 
them into his diocese, hoping they would be less noticed 
there than in a place upon which government kept so 
strict an eye as Galway. A few of these unhappy ladies 
were accordingly translated to Dublin ; but they had 
scarcely reached the city, when the lords-justices received 
information of their arrival, and immediately issued orders 
for their apprehension, in consequence of which several 
were taken in their conventual habits. A proclamation 
was then issued, dated 20th September of that year, to 
apprehend said John Burke, Dr. Byrne, and Dr. Nary, as 
popish priests attempting to exercise ecclesiastical jurisdic- 
tion contrary to the laws of this kingdom ; and it was 
ordered that all laws in force against the papists should be 
strictly carried into execution. Such were the fears and 

* Cogan, Diocese of Meath, vol. i. p. 266. 



In the Reign of George II. 445 

alarms caused by the arrival of a few weak women in the 
capital, as if the circumstance had been sufficient to over- 
turn the government, or to shake the foundations of the 
Established Church." — Hardimari s History of Galway, p. 
275. 

In 1 71 7, the Dominican nuns were driven from Galway* 
as the Franciscans had been a few years previously. 



Anno 1718. 

REV. ANTONY MAGUIRE, O.P.P., AND OTHERS. 

De Burgo gives a striking instance of the proceedings 
of the priest-hunters which occurred in this year. 

" In this year," says he, " as I well remember, seven 
priests were taken prisoners together in Dublin by means 
of a Portuguese Jew named Gorsia, who pretended to be a 
priest, in order to discover the true priests. Among them 
were Father Antony Maguire, Irish provincial of the Domi- 
nicans, two Jesuits, one Friar Minor, and the other three 
secular priests. They were sent into exile, and threatened 
with death if they returned. Nevertheless, they all return- 
ed under feigned names, and escaped detection." — Hib. 

Dom. p. 160. 

» 

Anno 1737. 

REV. JOHN BARNEWALL. 

Another striking instance of the proceedings of the 
priest-hunters may be given from the Diocese of Meath. 
It shows the violence of the persecution as late as 1737 : 

"In 1704, Rev. John Barnewall was registered at Trim 
as 'popish priest of Ardbraccan, Martry, Rathboyne, and 
Liscartan.' He was ordained in 1680, at Dunadea, county 
Kildare, by Dr. Mark Foristall, Bishop of Kildare, lived at 



446 Martyrs and Confessors 

Neilstown the year of the registration, and was then forty- 
seven years of age. This great ecclesiastic was nearly 
related to Lord Trimblestown, and was, in every sense of 
the word ; worthy of the noble family from which he sprang. 
Very few of his contemporaries suffered more intensely 
and continuously from the operation of the penal laws. 
Many years have elapsed since his departure, yet his 
memory is fondly cherished by the people of this parish. 
Whatever residence Father Barnewall may have had in the 
year of registration, it is certain that, a few years subse- 
quently, when he refused to take the oath of abjuration, he 
was obliged to flee like a felon from his home, and take 
shelter in the ditches, the barns, and the cabins of the poor.. 
He seems to have been particularly singled out for perse- 
cution ; and neither his illustrious birth, his distinguished 
relatives, his fine, manly figure, nor his piety, charity, learn- 
ing, or self-sacrifice could screen him from the informers 
and priest-hunters, whom the infamous penal laws called 
into existence. 

" In the early part of the last century, there were two 
mud-wall thatched chapels in this district, one at Neilstown, 
and the other in the valley, beneath the old church of 
Rathboyne, or Cortown. Father Barnewall, during the lull 
of the storm, officiated in these humble temples ; but when 
the tempest would burst forth, these wretched houses of 
worship would be closed, and then Mass would be celebrat- 
ed by stealth on the hills, in the woods, or at the backs 
of ditches. The place selected for the celebration of the 
sacred mysteries would constantly be changed, in order to 
baffle the priest-hunter ; and word, in the meantime, would 
be whispered round the people, during the week, where to 
meet the priest on the following Sunday. At break of day, 
and frequently before it, the faithful would assemble to as- 
sist at the Holy Sacrifice, and the most active of the flock 
would keep vigil, to protect the sacred ceremonies from 



In the Reign of George II. 447 

profanation, and the unfortunate priest from the dread 
penalties of the law. 

" There lived at that time on the banks of the Black- 
water, at a place called Oldtown, near Kilmainham-Hert- 
ford, a notorious priest-hunter, named Sir Richard Barker. 
In order to accomplish his purposes, and to clutch his bribe, 
he had in his pay a troop of spies distributed throughout 
the district, by means of whom he sought to discover the 
hiding-places of the clergy, and the lonely places where the 
people assembled to worship on Sunday mornings. Often 
did these men plot the capture of Father Barnewall, but 
failed, either because it was difficult to discover his hiding- 
place, or because they found it dangerous to attempt his 
capture. On one occasion they well-nigh succeeded. They 

assembled in the house of one of their corps, named G , 

at Martry. A messenger was sent among the people to 
find out Father Barnewall, in order (as was pretended) to 
have the last rites of the church administered to a person 
in danger of death. When Father Barnewall heard that a 
person was dangerously ill, he hastened to discharge his 
duty, but a poor Catholic servant-girl, who had overheard 
what was in contemplation, contrived to meet him outside 
the house, and, in a few words, warned him to make off 
with his life. Father Barnewall acted on the suggestion, 
and, for this time, the priest-hunters were baffled. At 
length they succeeded by a stratagem, in the following 
manner : There lived at that time, at Allenstown House, a 
kind-hearted Protestant gentleman, named Waller, who 
often sheltered Father Barnewall, and gave him timely 
information whenever the priest-hunters contemplated 
prosecuting a search. Waller was a magistrate, living in 
the parish, and thus had an opportunity of acquiring much 
valuable knowledge, of which he made liberal use for the 
protection of Father Barnewall. He was obliged, however, 
to proceed with extreme caution, as the Act of Parliament 



448 Martyrs and Confessors 

expressly stated ' that the prosecuting and informing 
against papists was an honorable service,' and 'that all 
magistrates who neglected to execute these (penal) laws 
were betrayers of the liberties of the kingdom.' The priest- 
hunters strongly suspected that Waller was more closely 
acquainted with Father Barnewall than the law allowed, 
and hence, having placed their ruffians in ambush, they 
despatched a messenger to find out Father Barnewall's 
'hiding-place,' and to tell him that Mr. Waller wanted him 
in all haste, as he had information of the greatest impor- 
tance to communicate. The priest lost no time in hasten- 
ing to Allenstown, but when he entered the grounds he 
found himself surrounded by his enemies, and, having no 
means of escape, was obliged to surrender. He was 
marched off in triumph, and lodged in Trim jail. The 
charges advanced against him were that he was a popish 
priest, living in the county in defiance of the statute, that 
he refused the oath of abjuration, and that he practised 
' the damnable and idolatrous superstitions of the Church 
of Rome.' The penalty for each of these offences was 
transportation for life, and, if he returned, to be hanged, 
drawn, and quartered. In the meantime Mr. Waller was 
not idle. He felt deeply grieved at the incarceration of his 
old friend, and he used all his family interest with the 
members of the grand jury, and succeeded at length in 
obtaining Father Barnewall's liberation. 

" In this age of Catholic development we can only dim- 
ly conceive the sufferings of the Irish priesthood, the in- 
cessant privations, humiliations, and persecutions to which 
they were exposed. The penal laws could be enforced at 
any moment, at the whim of every bigot. The clergy were 
clad in frieze like the peasantry, in order to conceal their 
ecclesiastical dignity ; and they usually travelled with a wal- 
let, or linen bag, across their shoulders, in each end of which, 
equally balanced, were stowed the vestments and altar linen 



In the Reign of George II 449 

for the Holy Sacrifice. They had no fixed residence, but 
journeyed from cabin to cabin, distributing graces, in- 
structing their flocks, and administering the sacraments ; 
and they partook of the humble fare of the peasantry, to 
which they were at all times welcome. Father Barnewall 
was one morning on his way to celebrate Mass in a house 
near Allenstown. He was clad in frieze, had his vest- 
ments in a satchel across his shoulder, a stick in his right 
hand, and in his left a small silver chalice, unscrewed so 
as to fit in a little chamois cover. On the roadside Mr. 
Waller was speaking to a notorious priest-hunter, named 
Pilot, who was out that very morning searching for infor- 
mation about Father Barnewall. A glance of friendly re- 
cognition passed between Waller and the priest, and each 
knew it would be unsafe to hazard more. The priest-hunt- 
er, half-suspecting the disguised traveller, said, ' Good- 
morning, sir.' ' Good-morning,' was answered. ' My 
name is Pilot ; what is yours ?' ' Your name, (Pilate,) 
sir, bodes no good to a Christian.' Waller interposed, 
saying, * Let him pass, let him pass.' This was good ad- 
vice for Pilot ; for, if he had assailed the priest single- 
handed, he would have met a rather unpleasant reception. 
" At one time, during which the penal laws against the 
priesthood were enforced with more than usual rigor, Wal- 
ler had Father Barnewall concealed for several weeks in 
his house. Many of the peasantry were aware of this, and 
understood also the propriety of seeming not to know, and, 
of course, the necessity of not divulging, the hiding-place 
of their afflicted pastor. Hence, when any of the people 
had a sick-call, the messenger would proceed to Aliens- 
town, pass round the house so as to attract attention, and 
when Mr. Waller inquired the cause of uneasiness, the re- 
ply would be that a priest was required in such a place. 
The peasant knew the hint was enough, and forthwith 
Father Barnewall would be seen journeying on his mission 



45 o Martyrs and Confessors 

of charity, and, having discharged his duty, stealing back 
to the house of his protector and friend. However, Father 
Barnewall was sometimes obliged to visit remote parts of 
his parish, and then found it impossible to return for a 
considerable time. On one occasion, while visiting the 
parish of Cortown, the priest-hunter from Kells made so 
close a search for him that to ensure his safety a farmer 
constructed a little apartment for him in a rick of turf, in 
which Father Barnewall dwelt for several days. It some- 
times happened, too, when dwelling in the cabins of the 
poor, that in order to take exercise, and at the same time 
escape the watchful eyes of his enemies, he roamed through 
the lonely unfrequented fields with a woman's cloak around 
him, and the hood over his head. Such were some of the 
many stratagems the Irish priest was obliged to adopt in 
the days of persecution, in order to preserve the faith ; and 
in the worst of times they never flinched or deserted the 
people. A volume might be written on the trying scenes 
through which the intrepid Father Barnewall passed 
in those dismal times. But his reward was near at hand ; 
the martyr's crown was soon to recompense him for years 
of labor and suffering. He was more than eighty years of 
age when he was again arrested by the priest-hunters, and 
pleaded guilty to the charge of having celebrated Mass. 
He was clad in a long frieze coat, wore an old hat, had a 
breviary in one hand and a staff in the other, and in this 
plight, surrounded by his enemies, he was marched in tri- 
umph to Navan, and lodged in the bridewell. After a fort- 
night's confinement, he was sent a prisoner to Dublin Cas- 
tle,* whence he never returned to his faithful people. The 

* The late William Forde. Esq., town clerk to the corporation of Dublin, who was born in 
this parish, told the writer that Father Barnewall was arrested about the year 1737, was con- 
veyed a prisoner to Dublin, and was put to death for the faith. There is a tradition in some 
parts of the diocese that, after suffering for some time in prison, he was shipped off in exile to 
the Continent, and the ship having entered some port in England, Father Barnewall was point- 
ed out as a popish priest from Ireland; was dragged from the ship, and hung in the streets. AU 
accounts concur that he suffered martyrdom for the faith. — Cogaft. 



In the Reign of George II. 451 

traditions of the parish are most specific in representing 
him as having been put to death for the faith ; but whe* 
ther in England, as some say, or in Dublin, there is no au- 
thentic account. Whether he died violently, or by slow, 
torturing imprisonment, he is equally entitled to the dis- 
tinction of having been one of the martyred priests of Ire- 
land." — Cogaris Diocese of Meal % vol. ii. p. 263. 



Anno 1744. 

REVS. NICHOLAS ENGLISH, DOMINICK KELLY, THOMAS 
NOLAN, MICHAEL LYNCH, AND JOHN GERALDINE. 

We have now come to the last scene in the sanguinary 
drama of religious persecution which we have traced 
through two hundred years. From 1700, as my readers 
have seen, the rigor of persecution against ecclesiastics had 
slackened. The penal laws were, indeed, in all their ma- 
lignant force, and their edge was yearly sharpened,* but 
priests were no longer put to death, and even their impri- 
sonment had become comparatively rare. In the year 
1743, under the administration of the Duke of Devonshire, 
a fresh act of active persecution led to such lamentable 
consequences as shocked the reviving humanity of the 
country, and led to the first regular toleration of the 
Catholic service. 

"On the 28th of February, 1743, a proclamation was 
issued, signed by the lord-lieutenant and the members of 
the privy council, directing all justices of the peace and 
others diligently to put in force the laws for the detection 
and apprehension of popish prelates and priests ; and large 
rewards were offered for the seizure and conviction of those 
proscribed persons, and of any others who should dare to 
conceal them or receive them into their houses. Nor was 

* The first relaxation of the penal laws was in 1765. 



45 2 Martyrs and Confessors 

this an idle threat. On Saturday, the 17th February, 1744, 
a certain alderman named William Aldrich went secretly 
to the Catholic parish church of St. Paul, in the north part 
of Dublin, and finding there a secular priest of the diocese 
of Dublin, named Nicholas English, in the act of saying 
Mass, (he had just read the preface,) he arrested him, and, 
only allowing him to lay aside the sacred vestments, sent 
him off to prison in a car. He then went to the convent 
of the Dominican nuns, and seeing two Dominican fathers 
who were chaplains there — Father Dominick Kelly, of 
Roscommon, and Thomas Nolan, of Gaula, in the county 
Fermanagh — sent them in another car to the same prison.* 

" All the other priests, both secular and regular, imme- 
diately changed their places of abode and concealed them- 
selves. The same Alderman Aldrich contrived, however, 
to arrest a Minorite named Michael Lynch, while he was 
deliberating about changing his domicile. All the bishops 
and priests fled to Dublin, because in so large a city it 
was easier to lie concealed than in the country. The 
faithful were deprived of all opportunity of hearing Mass, 
even on Sundays and holydays, except a few who managed 
to hear Mass in caves, and in Dublin in stables and other 
hidden places. As a certain Meath priest, of the name of 
John Geraldine, was saying Mass before a crowded con- 
gregation in the top story of an old and ruinous house, at 
the end of the Mass, just as the blessing was given and 
the people stood up, the house fell down ; and the priest 
and nine laics of both sexes were killed on the spot, and 
many mortally wounded. 

"The viceroy and the privy council were moved to 
pity by this lamentable event, and let it be known that 
they preferred that the chapels should be opened, rather 

* Father Thomas de Burgo, the writer, was, he tells us, himself attached to the church of 
St. Paul, and said Mass there at nine o'clock every day, while Father English said it at ten 
o'clock. Father De Burgo had formerly said his Mass at ten, and had changed hours with 
Father English only a few days before. 



In the Reign of George II. 453 

than that the citizens should be thus miserably cut off. 
All the chapels in Dublin were, therefore, opened on St. 
Patrick's Day, the seventeenth of March, 1745, and have 
remained open even to this day," namely, 1762. — Hit. 
Dom., pp. 175, 717. 

From 1745, the Catholics of Ireland heard Mass and 
received the sacraments in safety. Bishops and priests 
were restored to their missions ; the severity of the 
penal laws relaxed ; the axe had become blunted with 
use, the gibbet clogged with the blood of its victims, 
and, although eighty-five years more passed away before 
Catholic Emancipation became law, they were years of 
comparative peace. The martyrs had fought the good 
fight and conquered. The fruit of their victory was 
the immortal crown they had earned for themselves : 
and this victory and triumph they had secured for the 
Church and for Ireland. 



RETROSPECT. 



Though, from the year 1744, Catholic blood flowed 
less profusely in Ireland, persecution was not discon- 
tinued. From time to time, bigoted zealots and intoler- 
ant fanatics reminded the proscribed Catholics that the 
penal laws still stood upon the statute books. In their 
insatiable thirst for Papist blood, and in order to gratify 
their hatred for Popery, these misguided heretics con- 
tinued to .devise new plots in which to entrap their 
unsuspecting brethren. The same unfounded and un- 
proven charges of high treason that sent the martyr 
Plunket to the gibbet in 168 1, consigned the saintly 
Father Nicholas Sheehy to the gallows in 1766. 

Before entering into any further specific cases of the 
martyrdom, physical and civil, to which the Irish race 
was subjected by the government of England, we would 
do well to give a hasty retrospective glance at the 
various stages of English- polic}', and its results, in the 
unhappy island. 

The broad, fertile lands of Tipperary had become the 
spoil of Cromwellian planters and soldiers, while 
nearly all the Catholic people of Ireland who owned 
any portion of the land, were driven out of Munster, 
Leinster and Ulster, and on the first of May, 1654, they 
were forced across the Shannon into Connaught. The 
phrase used by the Cromwellians on the occasion was, 
" that they were to go to hell or Connaught." To the for- 
mer place, however, as being no part of the inheritance 
of St. Patrick, they did not go, but they were obliged 



Retrospect. 455 

to go to Connaught. Lest, even there, they might main- 
tain any hope of relief by sea, or enjoy the sight of those 
fair provinces and that beautiful country once their own, 
a law was established that no Irishman, transplanted 
into Connaught, was to come within four miles of the 
river Shannon, on the one side, or within four miles of 
the sea, on the other. There was a cordon of English 
soldiery and English forts drawn about them, and there 
they were to 1 ve in the bogs, in the fastnesses, and in the 
wild wastes of the most desolate region in Ireland ; there 
they were to pine and expire by famine and by every 
form of suffering that their Heavenly Father might per- 
mit to fall upon them. The fond hope, however, that 
they would yet have their own,— a hope which has never 
died out in an Irishman's bosom, — kept alive their natural 
antagonism to the Cromwellian settlers. The rough 
Puritan soldiers who came over to Ireland with the Bible 
in one hand and the sword in the other, and who had 
settled in the desolated plains of fair Munster, and the 
beautiful valleys of Leinster, were men of pluck, who 
would not tamely endure the restless spirit of these old 
outlawed proprietors, backed by the daring peasantry, 
who for generations had ever been the faithful clansmen 
or retainers of the ancient families. Having the adminis- 
tration of the civil laws and the disposal of the military 
in their hands, they proved themselves more than a match 
for their dispossessed and hereditary foes, while every 
means in their power was mercilessly brought into use to 
accomplish their purposes. 

When Cromwell died, in 1658, Ireland lay void as a 
wilderness; five-sixths of her people had perished ; men, 
women and children were found daily perishing in ditches, 
starved ; the bodies of many wandering orphans, whose 
fathers had embarked for Spain, and whose mothers had 
died of famine, were fed upon by wolves. In the years 
1652 and 1653, the plague and famine had swept away 



456 Retrospect. 

the inhabitants of whole counties, so that a man might 
travel twenty or thirty miles, and not see a living creature : 
man, beast or bird, — they were all dead, or had quit 
these desolate places. The troopers would tell stones of 
places where they saw smoke — it was so rare to see fire 
or smoke, either by day or night. In two or three cabins 
where they went, they found none but aged men, with 
women and children, and, in the words of the prophet, 
" they became as a bottle in the smoke;" their skin was 
black, like an oven, because of the terrible" famine ; they 
were seen to eat filthy carrion out of the ditch, black 
and rotten, and were said to have even taken corpses 
out of the graves to eat. 

" Within a twelvemonth after the Marquis of Clanri- 
carde left Ireland," says Borlase, " Mortagh O'Brien, the 
last of the Irish commanders, submitted to the parliament, 
on the usual terms of transportation, by the favor of 
which, twenty-seven thousand men had been that year 
sent away." " Cromwell," says Dalrymple (" Men of 
Great Britain," vol. i, part 2, page 267), " in order to get 
free of his enemies, did not scruple to transport forty 
thousand Irish from their own country, to fill all the 
armies in Europe with complaints of his cruelty, and 
admiration of their own valor." 

The design of the English Protestant party was 
totally to exterminate the Irish people. For the pur- 
pose of effectually clearing the country of the native 
Irish, it was, of course, expedient to get rid of as many 
persons of the military age as possible. In this way 
several other detachments, comprising from one to four 
thousand men each, under the command of Irish officers, 
were disposed of, by Cromwell and his government, to 
foreign princes. 

But the enormities of the ruling tyrants did not stop 
here. Those of military age who were spared from the 
slaughter, to the amount, by a safe calculation, of more 



Retrospect. 457 

than forty thousand, were sent into foreign service, on 
the continent of Europe, especially to Spain and Belgium. 
The following note will be found in Dr. Lingard's 
" History of England," vol. x, page 306: "According to 
Pexty, six thousand boys and men were sent away. Lynch 
{'Cambrensis Eversus) says that they were sold for slaves. 
Broudin, in his 'Propugnaciduvi (Pragce, 1669), numbers the 
exiles at one hundred thousand. ' Ultra centum millia 
omnis scxus et cetatis, e quibus aliquot millia in diver sas 
America tabacarias insulas relegata sunt ' (page 692).* In 
a letter in my possession, written in 1656, it is said: 
' Catholicos pauper es pie?iis navibus mittunt in Barbados et 
insulas America. Credo jam sexaginta millia abivisse. 
Expulsis enim ab initio in Hispaniam et Belgium maritis, 
jam uxores et proles in Americam destinantur.' ' 

It would, indeed, be idle to exclaim at any cruelty com- 
mitted at that time. Those unhappy exiles perished in 
hundreds and thousands. Of the myriads thus trans- 
ported, not a single one survived at the end of twenty 
years. 

Was there any species of crime which was not per- 
petrated against the Irish by the barbarians of the Eng- 
lish government? 

In Thurlow's correspondence the formation of press- 
gangs, to collect the male and female youths for trans- 
portation, is stated at length. " Some have thought," says 
the great O'Connell, " that the system adopted by the 
monster who now rules in Russia, of collecting young 
women from his Polish subjects to send to his military 
colonies, was an invention of his own. But there is no 



* " Beyond one hundred thousand of either sex and every age, of whom 
some thousands were sent to the tobacco-growing islands of America." 

f'They are sending vessels, filled with poor Irish, to Barbadoes and the islands 
of America. I believe upward of sixty-thousand have already gone, it being 
intended to send to America the wives and children of those men who have 
been already exiled to Spain and Belgium." 



45^ Retrospect. 

atrocity so great as to not have its prototype in the 
brutalities inflicted upon the people of Ireland by some 
of their English rulers. It is melancholy to read such 
a statement as the following : — 

" ' After the conquest of Jamaica, in 1655, the Protector, 
that he might people it, proposed to transport a thousand 
Irish boys and a thousand Irish girls to the island. At 
hrst only the young women were demanded, to which it 
is replied : ' Although we must use force in taking them 
up, yet it being so much for their own good, and likely 
to be of so great advantage to the public, it is not in the 
least doubted that you may have such number of them 
as you shall think fit.' (Thurlow, iv, 23.) 

"In the next letter, H. Cromwell says: 'I think it 
might be of like advantage to your affairs there, and 
ours here, if you should think fit to send one thousand 
five hundred or two thousand young boys, of twelve or 
fourteen years of age, to the place afore- mentioned. We 
could well spare them, and they would be of use to you ; 
and who knows but it might be a means to make them 
Englishmen, I mean, rather, Christians?' (Page 40.) Thur- 
low answers: * The committee of the council have voted 
one thousand girls, and as many youths, to be taken up 
for that purpose.' (Page 75.) 

" Sacred heaven ! Thus it is that the English ' did 
good' to the people of Ireland ! The young women were 
to be taken by force from their mothers, their sisters, 
their homes, and to be transported to a foreign and 
unhealthy clime. ' O but,' said the English rulers, ' it is 
all for their own good ! ' Then, again, look at the cold- 
blooded manner in which Henry Cromwell proposes to 
make them ' English and Christians.' 

" ' Englishmen and Christians!' But no ! Comment is use- 
less. All these things appear like a hideous dream. They 
would be utterly incredible, only that they are quite 
certain. 



Retrospect. 459 

" There remained, however, too many to render pos- 
sible the horrible cruelty of cutting- all their throats. The 
Irish government, constituted as it was of the superior 
officers of the regicide force, resorted to a different plan. 
Here is the account given by Lord Clarendon of their 
conduct : — 

" ' They found the utter EXTIRPATION of the nation 
{which they had intended) to be in itself very difficult, and 
to carry in it somewhat of horror, that made some 
impression on the stone-hardness of their own hearts. 
After so many thousands destroyed by the plague which 
raged over the kingdom, by fire, sword and famine, and 
after so many thousands transported into foreign parts, 
there remained still such a numerous people that they 
knew not how to dispose of; and though they were 
declared to be all forfeited, and so to have no title to 
an}-thing, yet they must remain somewhere. They, 
therefore, found this expedient, which they called an act 
of grace : there was a large tract of land, even to the half 
of the province of Connaught, that was separated from 
the rest by a long and large river, and which, by the 
plague and MANY MASSACRES, remained almost 
desolate. Into this space they required all the Irish to 
retire by such a day, under the penalty of death; and all 
who should after that time be found in any other part of the 
kingdom, man, woman or child, SHOULD BE KILLED 
BY ANYBODY WHO SAW OR MET THEM. The 
land within this circuit, the most barren in the king- 
dom, was, out of the grace and mercy of the conquerors, 
assigned to those of the nation as were enclosed, in such 
proportions as might, with great industry, preserve their 
lives.' " (" Clarendon's Life," vol. ii, page 116.) 

A year before Cromwell died, in 1657, we find a mem- 
ber of the Irish parliament, Major Morgan, declaring 
that the whole land of Ireland was in ruin ; for, besides 
the cost of rebuilding the churches, court-houses and 



460 Retrospect. 

market-houses, which were very heavy, they were under 
a very heavy charge for public rewards, paid for the 
destruction of three burdensome beasts. And what, 
think you, were these three beasts? The wolf, the priest, 
and the tory / The wolf, because, at that very time, there 
was made a grant of land within nine miles of Dublin, 
on the north, that is the most cultivated side of the city, 
on the condition of keeping a pack of wolf-hounds to 
hunt and destroy the wolves. These animals had in- 
creased with the desolation of the country, so that they 
came, famishing, to the very gates of Dublin, whence 
they had to be driven. The priest, because his head had 
the same value in court as that of a wolf, namely, five 
pounds; and the law of the English parliament wnich 
offered such a price, aye and twice as much, for the head 
of a Jesuit or a bishop, was obliged to be enforced by 
the magistrates, under most severe penalties. We find 
the country filled with informers ; we find priest-hunting 
actually reduced to a profession in Ireland, and, strange 
enough, we find the Portuguese Jews coming all the 
way from Portugal, in order to hunt priests in Ire- 
land. When, in 1698, under William III, the religious 
were shipped off into banishment and slavery, as we 
have already mentioned (folio 438), not one of the eight 
hundred and odd secular priests that remained in the 
land would be allowed to say Mass in public or private, 
nor indeed remain in the country until he first took the 
oath to renounce the supremacy of the pope — of papal 
abjuration ; in other words, until he became a Protestant. 
The third troublesome beast of Major Morgan's cate 
gory was the tory, under which name are included the 
desperate men who, under some dispossessed gentleman 
either aboriginal Irish or old English, had retired into 
the wilds, on the surrender of the army, or who had run 
out again, after submitting, and resumed arms rather 
than remain in Connaught. The country was infested 



Retrospect. 461 

with them, and all the great regions, left waste by war 
and transplantations, gave them ample room for conceal- 
ment, while the inadequate numbers of the forces of the 
commonwealth, unequal to the full control of so extensive 
a country as Ireland, left them at liberty to plan their 
surprises. These outlaws, who were, at a later day, 
known as Rapparees, and as such are described by Eng- 
lish historians in fearful terms, continued long to infest 
and desolate the country, and we find accounts of them 
in state papers, down even to the last years of the reign 
of George IV. 

Before passing from the commonwealth to the restora- 
tion of the English monarchy, in 1660, we give an ex- 
tract from the rare and curious tract of Father Morison, 
published in 1659, containing a summary of many of the 
Irish chiefs and nobles who suffered for their faith, but 
whose names are not elsew T here given in our pages : — 

" I do not," says the reverend chronicler (of whose 
personal sufferings see mention on page 328 of this present 
work), " here enumerate any person slain in battle, 
although he might have fallen in the cause of his religion, 
nor do I give the tenth part of the persons of quality who 
were murdered, but only the more illustrious, being 
chiefly those who were received into allegiance by the 
Protestants after the amnesty had been made and actually 
entered on : a treachery which barbarians and infidels 
themselves would abhor and deem detestable. 

" I. Lord Hugh McMahon, the chief of his illustrious 
race, a brave and noble military leader, was, after two 
years' imprisonment in London, half hanged, and, ere life 
was extinct, quartered ; his head was then placed on an 
iron spike on London Bridge, to feed the ravenous fowls 
of the air ; his four quarters were placed over four of the 
gates of London. 

" II. Cornelius Maguire, Lord Viscount Enniskillen, a 
most devout and holy man, sole companion in captivity 



462 Retrospect. 

of the aforesaid Hugh McMahon, underwent the same 
butchery about two months after the execution of Mc- 
Mahon. 

" III. The illustrious Felix O'Neill (captured by Pro- 
testant device) was half hanged in Dublin, A. D. 1652, 
and, while yet alive, was quartered. His head was stuck 
on a great spike, at the western gate of Dublin, and his 
quarters were sent to be stuck on spikes in four different 
parts of the kingdom. 

" IV. Henry O'Neill, son of Eugene O'Neill, taken 
prisoner in battle, and, notwithstanding plighted faith, 
slaughtered in Ulster, A. D. 1651. 

" V. Thaddeus O'Connor (Sligo), descended from the 
royal race of the last and most powerful monarchs of 
Ireland, a man of great goodness and innocence, hung 
in the town of Boyle, in Connaught, A. D. 1652, after the 
general amnesty had been made. 

" VI. Constantine O'Ruairk, taken prisoner in battle, 
murdered in 1652, notwithstanding plighted faith, 

"VII. Theobald de Burg, Lord Viscount Mayo, after 
a truce had been made with all such persons in the 
kingdom as were not actually in arms against the Pro- 
testants, and a general amnesty promised, was shot in 
Gal way, in 165 1. 

"VIII. Charles O'Dowd, of a most high and noble 
race, was hanged A. D. 165 1. 

" IX. James O'Brien, of illustrious lineage, maternal 
nephew of the brave Donatus O'Brien (of whom see 
account, page 309), a } 7 outh of high hopes and prospects, 
was murdered at Nenagh, in the Ormonds. They cut his 
head off, and sent it to his brother, Moriarty O'Brien, 
then their prisoner. 

" X. Bernard O'Brien, of the same noble family, a 
youth of equally fair prospects, was hanged in 165 1. 

" XI. Daniel O'Brien, first cousin of the said Bernard, 
was hanged, and his head cut off at Nenagh, 165 1. 



Retrospect. 463 

" XII. The illustrious Colonel John O'Kenedy, a man 
of the utmost integrity, was slain by the swords of the 
Protestants, after their faith had been pledged to him in 
battle. His head was then cut off, and fastened on a 
spike in the town of Nenagh, A. D. 165 1. 

"XIII. James O'Kenedy, son of the aforesaid illus- 
trious gentleman, a youth of great hopes, being deluded 
with a similar pledge of good faith, was hanged also at 
Nenagh, A. D. 165 1. 

" XIV. The illustrious Sir Patrick Purcell, Vice-gen- 
eral of all Munster, noble-hearted and a most accom- 
plished warrior (renowned for his services in Germany, 
against Sweden and France, under Ferdinand III, of 
august memory), was hanged after the taking of Limerick, 
his head cut off, and exposed on a stake over the southern 
gate (called John's Gate) of the city of Limerick, A. D. 
1651. 

" XV. The illustrious and most generous Sir Godfrey 
Barron, a sincere Catholic, of the highest fidelity, and 
of singular eloquence, who had been deputed by the 
confederated Catholics of Ireland as their envoy to his 
most Christian majesty, Louis XIV, was also hanged at 
Limerick. 

" XVI. The noble Sir Godfrey Galway was likewise 
hanged at Limerick, 165 1. 

"XVII. The noble Thomas Stritch, Mayor of Lim- 
erick, and alderman, was, with the like cruelty, hanged 
at the same time with the rest. His head was then cut 
off, and fastened to the city gate. 

"XVIII. The noble Dominic Fanning, ex-Mayor of 
Limerick, and alderman, a well-known man, and of the 
highest integrity, who had been of great service to the 
confederated Catholics, and had laudably conferred much 
benefit on the kingdom, as well as on the city, was hanged 
at Limerick along with the rest, A. D. 165 1. His head 
was cut off and affixed to the gate. 



464 Retrospect. 

"XIX. Daniel O'Higgins, medical doctor, a wise and 
pious man, was hanged at the same time at Limerick? 
165 1. 

" XX. The illustrious John O'Connor, Lord of Kerry 
and Tracht, on account of his adhesion to the Catholic 
party, and his efforts to draw to it not only his personal 
followers, but all with whom he had friendship, was, after 
naving been seized upon by stratagem by Protestants, 
brought to Tralee, in that county, and there half hanged 
and then beheaded, A. D. 1652. 

"XXI. The illustrious Lord Edward Butler, son of 
Lord Mountgarret, an innocent man, who had never 
taken arms, was hanged at Dublin after the truce had 
been commenced and amnesty proclaimed throughout 
the whole kingdom, A. D. 1652." 

That no mistake may be made as to the real sentiment 
which animated the English race in their relentless fury 
against the Irish Catholics, we add an extract from a 
pamphlet entitled, " The Simple Cobbler of Aggavam 
in America," by Theodore de La Guard, which was first 
published in London in 1647, and passed through several 
editions : — 

" A word of Ireland : not of the nation universally, nor 
of any man in it, that hath as much as one haire of 
Christianity or humanity growing on his head or beard ; 
but only of the truculent cutthroats, and such as shall 
take up arms in their defence. 

"These Irish, anciently called Anthropophagi, man- 
eaters, have a tradition among them, that when the devil 
showed our Saviour all the kingdomes of the earth and 
their glory, that he would not show Him Ireland, but 
reserved it for himself. It is most probably true, for he 
hath kept it ever since for his own peculiar ; the old fox 
foresaw that it would eclipse the glory of all the rest ; he 
thought it wisdom to keep it for a bog-gard for himself 
and all his unclean spirits employed in this hemisphere, 



Retrospect. 465 

and the people to do his son and heire, I mean the Pope, 
that service for which Lewis II kept his barber, Oliver, 
which makes them to be so bloodthirsty. They are the 
very offal of men, dregges of 'mankind ; reproach of Christ en- 
dome ; the dots that crawl on the beastes tail. I wonder 
Rome itself is not ashamed of them. 

" I beg, upon my hands and knees, that the expedition 
against them may be undertaken while the hearts and 
hands of our soldiers are hot, to whome I will be bold to say 
briefly : Happy is he that shall reward e them as they have 
served us, and cursed is he that shall do the work of the 
Lord negligently. CURSED BE HE THAT HOLD- 
ETH BACK HIS SWORD FROM BLOOD; YEA, 
CURSED BE HE THAT MAKETH NOT HIS 
SWORD STARKE DRUNK WITH IRISH BLOOD ; 
that doth not recompense them double for their hellish 
treachery to the English ; that maketh them not heaps 
upon heaps, and their country a dwelling-place for drag- 
ons, an astonishment to nations ! Let not that eye look 
ior pity, nor that hand be spared, that pities or spares 
them, and LET HIM BE ACCURSED THAT CURS- 
ETH THEM NOT BITTERLY." 

In 1659 came the Restoration, and Charles II was safely 
seated on the throne of England. Of all who had sup- 
ported the cause of his father, none had fought harder 
or bled more freely than the natives of Ireland, whoi 
nis advent found in worse than captivity, amid the wil 
of Connaught. What more natural than the anticipation 
that they, who had been so true and so faithful, would 
share part and parcel in the restoration of rights? 
Aside from all thoughts of honors and titles, were they not 
authorized at least to expect their own estates and pos- 
sessions ? And yet Charles II, by a direct act of settle- 
ment, confirmed the Cromwellians in the lands they had 
seized, in the very wealth and influence which they had 
used against their lawful possessors, and by means of 



466 Retrospect. 

which they had labored so successfully to destroy his 
own father's life and kingdom. 

There was, indeed, a court of claims organized, but it 
was only intended for the benefit of such Englishmen as 
had suffered from the revolution ; and as soon as it was 
perceived that Irish gentlemen also were advancing their 
claims likewise, and opening their cases, the court was at 
once closed, leaving, as Nugent writes, over five thousand 
parties who, although never outlawed, had been deprived 
of their property, and were now prevented from even 
legally seeking to recover it. 

The negation of rights was not all the evil that Charles 
II inflicted on the unhappy race, for, beginning in 1673, 
he repeatedly affixed his signature to most infamous laws, 
framed for the very purpose of abolishing and rooting 
out every vestige of Catholicity from Irish soil. Bishops 
and priests were denied all right of residence, and even 
the laity had to obtain a license in order to breathe freely 
their native air. Edmond O'Riley, the Primate, was ban- 
ished ; Archbishop Talbot, to whom permission had been 
given to return home to die, was seized at Maynooth, and 
ended his days in a dungeon. In 1679 Bishop Plunket 
was seized by Ormond, carried to London, away from 
ail danger of a possibly honest jury in Ireland, and exe- 
cuted at Tyburn, in 1681. 

Four years later came James II ; and when, but three 
years later, his own daughter, Mary, and her husband, 
William of Orange, landed to establish a Protestant 
succession, James was very glad to have the loyal Irish to 
fall back upon as his supporters, and the only supporters 
of the legitimate king of England. The Irish parliament ot 
1689, summoned by James, declared " that there should 
be no more religious persecution in Ireland, and that 
no man, from that day forward, should suffer for his con- 
science or his faith.'' The only bill of attainder they 
passed was against the enemies of the crown, against 



Retrospect. 4^7 

the upholders of the rebellion, and the unfilial children 
of their king. 

It is not our purpose here to recount the days when 
those two armed forces of James and William went up 
and down the land, rich already with the blood of so 
many thousands of her sons, slain for conscience' sake, 
and by the sword of England, and now again to be satu- 
rated with that of another generation, ever faithful to their 
Church, and obedient to the command of the unworthy 
ruler who claimed their services. From the Boyne to 
the Shannon, and Athlone to Limerick, spite the lack of 
discipline and want of equipments, short of artillery, 
their best leaders discouraged by the blundering faint- 
heartedness of the king, the brave Irish never for a mo- 
ment tarnished their name for heroism and undaunted 
braverv. 

The second siege of Limerick closed the public career 
of the last Catholic king of England, in 1691, with the 
surrender of the gallant Sarsfield, and then began another 
period of martyrdom for the children of the saints. 
The depths of infamy to which the English government 
sank from the day of the Treaty of Limerick can only 
be conceived by those who read, as we here give them, the 
particulars of the treaty, and then consider the manner 
in which each and all of its provisions were so outrage- 
ously trampled on by that nation whose leaders, having 
deliberately denied their fealty to God, felt doubly sure 
in denying it to their fellow-subjects. 



TREATY OF LIMERICK 

IN THE 

Reign of William III. 

1691, 

When James II abdicated the throne of England, he 
retired to France to solicit the aid of Louis XIV to en- 
able him to secure the possession of Ireland, where he 
was still acknowledged as their lawful sovereign. On the 
1 2th of March, 1689, James landed at Kinsale, with about 
twelve hundred of his own subjects, in the pay of France, 
and one hundred and ninety French officers. He was 
received with open arms, and the whole country seemed 
to be devoted to him ; for, although the Protestants in 
the North had declared for the new government, their 
strength and number were inconsiderable, when com- 
pared with the forces of the Lord-Deputy Tyrconnei. 
This minister had disarmed all the other Protestants in 
one day, and assembled an army of thirty thousand foot 
and eight thousand calvary.* Addresses were poured 
in upon James from all orders of the people. Even the 
established clergy, among the rest, filled a conspicuous 
part in congratulating him upon his arrival. 

James continued to govern Ireland, without any inter- 
ruption from William, till the 13th of August, f when 
Schomberg landed at Belfast with an English army of 
ten thousand men. To oppose him, James collected his 

* Smollett, i, 36. ,, t Leland, vol. iii, b. 6, c. 6. 



Treaty of Limerick in the Reign of William III. 469 

forces, amounting to thirty thousand men, at Drogheda.* 
Schomberg, who had arrived at Dundalk, thought it 
prudent to advance no farther ; and, instead of reducing 
Ireland, after having lost one-half of his army by sickness, 
he, at the end of the campaign, was under the necessity 
of entrenching himself against an enemy which he had 
been taught in England to despise, and of confining his 
operations to the protection of the northern province, f 

On the 14th of June, 1690, William landed with rein- 
forcements at Carrickfergus. The distracted state of 
England, and the formidable preparations of France, 
inclined him to a vigorous prosecution of the war in 
Ireland. % 

He advanced toward Dublin with an army of thirty- 
six thousand men. James collected his forces, amount- 
ing to thirty-three thousand, at Drogheda, and, by 
an unaccountable infatuation, rejected the advice of his 
general officers to act on the defensive against William, 
who would then have to contend, at the same time, 
against a threatened foreign invasion of Britain, the in- 
surrection which his own subjects were plotting, and the 
difficulty of maintaining his Irish army in an unfriendly 
country, without provisions or succors. 

Though William obtained a decided victory at the 
Boyne, the Irish army had fought with courage and 
obstinacy, and in consequence of having at one time 
repulsed the centre of the English army, were able to 
retire in good order, with the loss of only fifteen hundred 
men.§ The subsequent defeat of General Douglas before 
Athlone, and of William himself before Limerick, left 
James, at the end of the campaign, in possession of nearly 
one-half of Ireland, and well supported by an army 
inured to war, and commanded by able and experienced 
generals. William experienced still greater embarrass- 
ments on the continent and in England. A victory had 

* Leiand. t Ibid. t Ibid. $ Ibid. 



47° Treaty of Limerick 

been gained by Luxemburgh, in Flanders, over Prince 
Waldeck and the confederate army ; Tourville had de- 
feated the united fleets of England and Holland, and 
great dejection and discontent were visible among 
William's British subjects. 

The king having returned to England in the autumn 
of 1690, General Ginkel, with an army inferior to that 
of St. Ruth, who now commanded the Irish forces, 
commenced the campaign by the capture of the fort 
of Baltimore. Having afterward taken Athlone, and 
defeated St. Ruth at the battle of Aughrim, he laid 
siege to Limerick on the 25th August, 1691. The for- 
tifications had been strengthened since William was 
repulsed before it, in the preceding year ; the garrison 
was healthy, well supplied, and in numbers equal to the 
assailants, and strong succors were daily expected from 
France.* The besiegers, on the other hand, were too 
few for the undertaking, the season of the year was far 
advanced, and they had no expectations of receiving any 
reinforcements. Week after week passed away without 
Ginkel obtaining any advantage over the besieged ; at 
length he made a lodgment on the west of the Shannon. 
But, notwithstanding this success, it was debated whether 
the siege should be carried on, or converted into a block- 
ade : such were the difficulties foreseen in reducing the 
city. It was dangerous for the besiegers to continue 
in their present station on the approach of winter, and 
hazardous to divide an army sufficient only for assailing 
the town on one side ; and yet the only effectual way of 
reducing it was to invest it on all sides, by cutting off the 
garrison from all intercourse with the county of Clare. f 

William, in the meantime, was so sensible of the ne- 
cessity of obtaining the surrender of the Irish army, in 
order to secure his newly-acquired throne and the success 
of the revolution, that he sent instructions to the lords- 

* Leland. t Ibid. 



In the Reign of William III. 471 

justices to issue a proclamation offering to the Catholics 
still more liberal terms than those which they afterward 
accepted ; and he gave Ginkel urgent directions to termi- 
nate the war on any conditions.* Fortunately, however, 
for William and the revolutionary party, but most unfor- 
tunately, as events have since proved, for the Catholics, 
the garrison of Limerick beat a parley on the twenty-ninth 
day of the siege. A cessation of three days was granted, 
on the last day of which, the Irish generals proposed 
terms of capitulation. They required an act of indemnity 
for all past offences, with a full enjoyment of the estates 
they possessed before the present revolution, freedom 
for the Catholic worship, with an establishment of one 
Roman Catholic ecclesiastic in each parish. They also 
required that the Catholics should be declared fully quali- 
fied for every office, civil and military ; that they should 
be admitted into all corporations, and that the Irish army 
should be kept up and paid in the same manner with the 
king's other troops, provided they were willing to serve. 
Ginkel refused to accede to their proposal ; but, being 
desired to offer such terms as he could grant, he proposed 
conditions which were accepted by the garrison, and 
which are contained in the following civil articles. 

Three days after they were signed, the French fleet 
arrived in Dingle Bay. 

The civil articles of Limerick, exactly printed 
from the letters- patent, wherein they are 
ratified and exemplified by their Majesties, 
under the great seal of england. 
'■Gidielmus et Maria Dei gratia, Anglice, Scot ice, Francice 
et Hibemice, rex et regina, fidci defensores, etc., oinnibiis ad 
quos presentes Uteres nostrce pervenerint saint em. Inspeximus 

* Leland, vol. iii, b. 6, c. 6, and Harris's " Life of William," p. 732. This was 
called the secret proclamation, because, though printe 1, it never was publishe \ 
in consequence of the lords-justices being informed of the inclination of the 
garrison to treat for tbeir surrender. 



472 Treaty of Limerick 

irrotulament. quarund. literarum patentium de confirma- 
tione, geren. dat. apud Westmonasterium vicesimo quarto 
die Februarii, ultimi prceteriti in cancellar. nostr. irrotulat. 
ac ibidem de recordo remanem. in hcec verba. 

" William and Mary, by the grace of God, etc., to all 
to whom these presents shall come, greeting : 

; Whereas certain articles, bearing date the 3d day 
of October last past, made and agreed on between our 
justices of our kingdom of Ireland, and our general of 
our forces there on the one part, and several officers 
there commanding within the city of Limerick, in our 
said kingdom, on the other part, whereby our said 
justices and general did undertake that we should ratify 
those articles within the space of eight months or sooner, 
and use their utmost endeavors that the same should 
be ratified and confirmed in parliament; the tenor of 
which said articles is as follows, viz. : — 

"Articles agreed upon the 3d day of October, 1691, 
between the Right Honorable Sir Charles Porter, Knight, 
and Thomas Coningsby, Esq., Lords-Justices of Ireland, 
and his Excellency, the Baron De Ginkel, Lieutenant- 
general and Commander-in-chief of the English army, 
on the one part ; and the Right Honorable Patrick, Earl 
of Lucan, Piercy Viscount Galloway, Colonel Nicholas 
Purcel, Colonel Nicholas Dusack, Sir Toby Butler, Colo- 
nel Garret Dillon, and Colonel John Brown, on the other 
part, in the behalf of the Irish inhabitants in the city and 
county of Limerick, the counties of Clare, Kerry, Cork, 
Sligo and Mayo, in consideration of the surrender of the 
city of Limerick, and other agreements made between 
the said Lieutenant-general Ginkel, the governor oi 
the city of Limerick, and the generals of the Irish army, 
bearing date with these presents, for the surrender of 
the said city, and submission of the said army, it is 
agreed that : 

"I. The Roman Catholics of this kingdom shall enjoy 



In the Reign of William IIL 473 

such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are 
consistent with the laws of Ireland, or as they did enjoy 
in the reign of King Charles II ; and their majesties, 
as soon as the affairs will permit them to summon a 
parliament in this kingdom, will endeavor to procure 
the said Roman Catholics such further security in that 
particular as may preserve them from any disturbance 
upon account of their said religion. 

" II. All the inhabitants or residents of Limerick, or any 
other garrison now in possession of the Irish, and all 
officers and soldiers now in arms, under any commission 
of King James, or those authorized by him to grant the 
same in the several counties of Limerick, Clare, Kerry, 
Cork and Mayo, or any of them ; and all the commis- 
sioned officers in their majesties' quarters, that belong to 
the Irish regiments now in being, that are treated with, 
and who are not prisoners of war, or have taken protec- 
tion, and who shall return and submit to their majesties' 
obedience ; and their and every of their heirs shall hold, 
possess and enjoy all and every their estates of freehold 
and inheritance, and all the rights, titles and interests, 
privileges and immunities, which they and every or any 
of them held, enjoyed, or were rightfully and lawfully 
entitled to, in the reign of King Charles II, or at any 
time since, by the laws and statutes that were in force in 
the said reign of King Charles II, and shall be put in pos- 
session, by order of the government, of such of them as are 
in the king's hands, or the hands of his tenants, without 
being put to any suit or trouble therein ; and all such 
estates shall be freed and discharged from all arrears 
of crown rents, quit rents, and other public charges in- 
curred and become due since Michaelmas, 1688, to the 
day of the date hereof; and all persons comprehended 
in this article shall have, hold and enjoy all their goods 
and chattels, real and personal, to them or any of them 
belonging and remaining, either in their own hands or in 



474 Treaty of Limerick 

the hands of any persons whatsoever, in trust for or for 
the use of them, or any of them ; and all and every the 
said persons, of what profession, trade or calling- soever 
the}* be, shall and may use, exercise and practise their 
several respective professions, trades and callings, as 
freely as they did use, exercise, and enjoy the same in the 
reign of King Charles IT, provided that nothing in this 
article contained be construed to extend to or restore any 
forfeiting person now out of the kingdom, except what 
are hereafter comprised ; provided, also, that no person 
whatsoever shall have or enjoy the benefit of this article 
that shall neglect or refuse to take the oath of allegiance,* 
made by act of parliament in England, in the first year 
of the reign of their present majesties, when thereunto 
required. 

" III. All merchants or reputed merchants of the city of 
Limerick, or of any other garrison now possessed by the 
Irish, or of any town or place in the counties of Clare 
or Kerry, who are absent bevond the seas, that have not 
borne arms since their majesties' declaration in February, 
1688, shall have the benefit of the second article, in the 
same manner as if they were present, provided such mer- 
chants and reputed merchants do repair into this kingdom 
within the space of eight months from the date hereof. 

"IV. The folio wing officers, viz., Colonel Simon Lutterel, 
Captain Rowland White, Maurice Eustace of Germans- 
town, Chieveas of Maystown, commonly called Mount 
Leinster, now belonging to the regiments in the afore- 
said garrisons and quarters of the Irish army, who were 
beyond the seas, and sent thither upon affairs of their 
respective regiments, or the army in general, shall have 
the benefit and advantage of the second article, provided 
they return hither within the space of eight months from 

* " I, A. B., do sincerely promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear 
true allegiance to their majesties, King William and Queen Mary, So help 
me God ! " 



In the Reign of William III 475 

the date of these presents, and submit to their majesties 
government, and take the above-mentioned oath. 

" V. That all and singular the said persons comprised 
in the second and third articles shall have a general 
pardon of all attainders, outlawries, treasons, misprisions 
of treason, premunires, felonies, trespasses, and other 
crimes and misdemeanors whatsoever, by them or any 
of them committed since the beginning of the reign of 
King James II ; and if any of them are attainted by par- 
liament, the lords-justices and general will use their best 
endeavors to get the same repealed by parliament, and 
the outlawries to be reversed gratis, all but writing- 
clerks' fees. 

" VI. And whereas these present wars have drawn on 
great violences on both parts, and that, if leave were 
given to the bringing all sorts of private actions, the 
animosities would probably continue that have been too 
long on foot, and the public disturbances last. For the 
quieting and settling, therefore, of this kingdom, and 
avoiding those inconveniences which would be the neces- 
sary consequence of the contrary, no person or persons 
whatsoever, comprised in the foregoing articles, shall 
be sued, molested or impleaded at the suit of any party 
or parties whatsoever, for an) 7 trespasses by them com- 
mitted, or for any arms, horses, money, goods, chattels, 
merchandises or provisions whatsoever by them seized 
or taken during the time of the war. And no person or 
persons whatsoever, in the second or third articles com- 
prised, shall be sued, impleaded, or made accountable 
for the rents or mesne rates of any lands, tenements or 
houses, by him or them received or enjoyed in this king- 
dom, since the beginning of the present war, to the day of 
the date hereof, nor for any waste or trespass by him or 
them committed in any such lands, tenements or houses ; 
and it is also agreed that this article shall be mutual and 
reciprocal on both sides. 



476 Treaty of Limerick 

" VII. Every nobleman and gentleman comprised in 
the said second and third articles shall have liberty to 
ride with a sword and case of pistols, if they think fit, 
and keep a gun in their houses for the defence of the 
same, or for fowling. 

"VIII. The inhabitants and residents of the city of 
Limerick, and other garrisons, shall be permitted to 
remove their goods, chattels, and provisions, out of the 
same without being viewed and searched, or paying any 
manner of duties, and shall not be compelled to leave 
the houses or lodgings they now have, for the space of 
six weeks next ensuing the date hereof. 

" IX. The oath to be administered to such Roman 
Catholics as submit to their majesties' government shall 
be the oath aforesaid, and no other. 

" X. No person or persons who shall at any time here- 
after break these articles, or any of them, shall thereby 
make or cause any other person or persons to forfeit or 
lose the benefit of the same. 

" XI. The lords-justices and general do promise to 
use their utmost endeavors that all the persons compre- 
hended in the above-mentioned articles shall be protected 
and defended from all arrests and executions for debt or 
damage, for the space of eight months next ensuing the 
date hereof. 

" XII. Lastly, the lords-justices and general do under- 
take that their majesties will ratify these articles within 
the space of eight months, or sooner, and use their 
utmost endeavors that the same shall be ratified and 
confirmed in parliament. 

" XIII. And whereas Colonel John Brown stood in- 
debted to several Protestants, by judgments of record, 
which appearing to the late government, the Lord Tyr 
connel and Lord Lucan took away the effects the said 
John Brown had to answer the said debts, and promised 
to clear the said John Brown of the said debts, which 



In the Reign of William III. 477 

effects were taken for the public use of the Irish and 
their army ; for freeing the said Lord Lucan of his said 
engagement, past on their public account, for payment 
of the said Protestants, and for preventing the ruin of the 
said John Brown, and for satisfaction of his creditors, at 
the instance of Lord Lucan, and the rest of the persons 
aforesaid, it is agreed that the said lords-justices and 
the said Baron De Ginkel shall intercede with the king 
and parliament to have the estates secured to Roman 
Catholics by articles and capitulation, in this kingdom 
charged with, and equally liable to, the payment of so 
much of the said debts as the said Lord Lucan, upon 
stating accounts with the said John Brown, shall certify 
under his hand that the effects taken from the said 
Brown amount unto, which account is to be stated, and 
the balance certified by the said Lord Lucan, in one 
and twenty days after the date hereof. 

" For the true performance hereof, we have hereunto 
set our hands. 

"Present: — Scravenmore, Charles Porter, 

H. Maccay, Thomas Coningsby, 

T. Talmash, Baron De Ginkel." 

" And whereas the said city of Limerick hath been 
since, in pursuance of the said articles, surrendered unto 
us, now know ye that we, having considered of the said 
articles, are graciously pleased hereby to declare that 
we do for us, our heirs and successors, as far as in us lies, 
ratify and confirm the same, and every clause, matter, and 
thing therein contained. And as to such parts thereof, for 
which an act of parliament shall be found to be neces- 
sary, we shall recommend the same to be made good by 
parliament, and shall give our royal assent to any bill or 
bills that shall be passed by our two houses of parliament 
to that purpose. And whereas it appears unto us that 
it was agreed between the parties to the said articles that 



4/8 Treaty of Limerick 

after the words, Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, Mayo, or 
any of them, in the second of the said articles, the words 
following, viz., ' And all such as are under their protection 
in the said counties,' should be inserted, and be part of the 
said articles, which words having been casuallv omitted 
by the writer, the omission was not discovered till after the 
said articles were signed, but was taken notice of before 
the second town was surrendered; and that our said jus- 
tices and general, or one of them, did promise that the said 
clause should be made good, it being within the intention 
of the capitulation, and inserted in the foul draft thereof. 
Our further will and pleasure is, and we do hereby ratify 
and confirm the said omitted words, viz., ' And all such 
as are under their protection in the said counties,' hereby 
for us, our heirs and successors, ordaining and declaring 
that all and every person and persons therein concerned 
shall and may have, receive and enjoy the benefit thereof, 
in such and the same manner as if the said words had been 
inserted in their proper place in the said second article ; 
any omission, defect or mistake in the said second article 
in any wise notwithstanding. Provided always, and our 
will and pleasure is, that these, our letters-patent, shall 
be enrolled in our court of Chancery, in our said kingdom 
of Ireland, within the space of one year next ensuing. In 
witness, etc., witness ourself at Westminster, the 24th 
day of February, anno regni regis et regince Gulielmi et 
Mar ice quarto per breve de privato sigillo. Nos autem tenor em 
premissor. predict. A d requisitionem attomat-general. domini 
regis et domince regince pro regno Hibemice. Duximus exem- 
plificand. per presentes. In cujus rei testimonium has litter as 
nostras fieri fecimus patentes. Testibus nobis ipsis apud 
Westmon. quinto die Aprilis, annoq. regni eorum quarto. 

" Bridges." 
" E.xaminat. per nos : 

" S Keck ) 

Lacon Wm. Childe. \ In CanceL Ma S istros -" 



In the Reign of William III. 479 

If this treaty is only considered according to those 
rules of common morality which influence the conduct 
of man to man ; if, in proportion to the great advantages 
which England derived from it, she was bound to con- 
strue it with liberality, as well as to execute it with good 
faith, then the Irish Catholics must be considered as 
placed by it in a situation nearly of complete equality 
with their Protestant countrymen. 

The free exercise of their religion was granted in the 
most unqualified manner ; security of property was as 
fully confirmed to them. In regard to personal security, 
they were pardoned all misdemeanors whatsoever of 
which they had been guilty. As to political power, 
inasmuch as the ninth article stipulated that the oath to 
be administered to such Catholics as submitted to his 
majesty's government should be the oath of allegiance 
of the first year of the reign of William and Mary, and 
no other, they were entitled by the treaty to sit in par- 
liament and to vote at elections, no law being then in 
existence to deprive them of those rights ; and they 
were also entitled to enjoy every other political right 
in common with all the king's subjects, except civil and 
corporate offices.* 

The practice of the several trades or professions was 
secured to them. They were allowed the use of arms, 
some of them especially, but all of them in consequence 
of limitation or exception to the contrary. Even the 

* The Articles of Limerick were signed by De Ginkel on the 3d of October, 
1691. The English parliament that passed the 3 William and Mary, c. 2, by 
which Irish peers and members of parliament were first excluded from sitting 
in parliament, by being required to take the oath of supremacy, met on the 22d 
of October, 1691. According to the constitution of Ireland, as granted by 
Henry II, and confirmed in 1782, this act of 3 William and Mary, c. 2, was not 
binding in Ireland; and though the Catholics submitted to it, they were not 
legally excluded from parliament till the twenty-second year of his late 
majesty's reign. This act was in direct violation of the Treaty of Limerick. 
Catholics were excluded from offices by the act of Charles II, mentioned in 
the following note. 



480 Treaty of Limerick 

laws which were in force against Catholics when the 
treaty took place, ought, according to the first article, to 
have been repealed,! because their majesties engaged 
by this article to obtain for the Catholics such further 
security, in respect to the exercise of their religion, as 
might preserve them from any disturbance on account 
of that religion. It is impossible for any other fair con- 
struction to be given to this article than that which is here 
given. It would be beneath the dignity of, and wholly 
inconsistent with, that character for good faith of which 
it has always been the pride of England to boast, to 
attempt to apply any other meaning to it. No doubt 
there are those who would wish to act, on all occasions, 
toward the Catholics according to that system of per- 
verted morality which the powerful always impose on 
the weak; but so long as the true principles of justice 
shall have their due influence, the majority of mankind 
can never consider this first article of the Treaty of 
Limerick in any other light than as a complete and per- 

t These laws were, 1st. An act against the authority of the See of Rome. It 
enacts that no person shall attribute any jurisdiction to the See of Rome ; 
that the person offending shall be subject to a premunire, and that all who 
have any office from the king, every person entering into orders, or taking a 
degree in the university, shall take the oath of supremacy. 

2d. An act restoring to the crown the ancient jurisdiction over the state, 
ecclesiastical and spiritual. It likewise enacts that every ecclesiastical person, 
every person accepting office, shall take the oath of supremacy. 

3d. An act for the uniformity of Common Prayer. It enacts that every person 
having no lawful excuse to be absent shall, every Sunday, resort to some place 
of worship of the Established Church, or forfeit twelve pence. 

4th. An act by which the chancellor may appoint a guardian to the child of a 
Catholic. 

5th. An act by which no Catholic schoolmaster can teach in a private house 
without a license from the ordinary of his diocese, and taking the oath of 
supremacy. 

6th. The new rules, by which no person can be admitted into any corpora- 
tion without taking the oath of supremacy. 

This statement is taken from the Report of the Committee of the House 
of Commons, appointed in 1697, to consider what penal laws were then in 
force against the Catholics. — "Com. Journal, of Ireland," vol. ii. 



In the Reign of William III. 481 

petual exemption of the Irish Catholics from all political 
and religious disqualification on account of their religion. 
This treaty has been very accurately described as the 
great charter of the civil and religious liberty of the 
Catholics;* and though not hitherto observed as such 
by the English government, the Catholics have a right 
— which time cannot efface, nor perfidy destroy — to recur 
to its stipulations, f 

Although William, in his declaration and confirma- 
tion of the treaty, said he would recommend such parts 
thereof, for which an act of parliament should be found 
necessary, to be made good by parliament, he dissolved 
the first parliament of his reign, which had met on the 5th 
of October, 1692, in September, 1693, without proposing 
to them any such measure. 

He was further guilty of a want of attention to his 
engagement, by not summoning another parliament till 
the 27th of April, 1695; and when this parliament did meet, 
he seems to have entirely forgotten that his own faith 
and the faith of the English nation were plighted to the 
Catholics in a solemn treaty : for, instead of recommend- 
ing to them to proceed to confirm the Articles of Lime- 
rick, he told them, in the speech of his lord-deputy, that 
he was intent upon the great work of a firm settlement 
of Ireland upon a Protestant interest. % The parliament 
was not backward in promoting his object. They, first 
of all, passed an act to deprive the Catholics of the means 
of educating their children, either at home or abroad, 
and of the privilege of being guardians either to their 
own or any other person's children. § Then they passed 

* Smolett. 

f The ninth volume of Mr. Burke's works, which was published some time 
after this history of the penal laws, contains a complete justification of the view 
here taken of the Treaty of Limerick. See p. 377, and note A in Appendix. 

X " Com. Journal of Ireland," ii, 279. 

§ 7 William III, c. 4. Of this act Mr. Burke says : " Whilst this restraint 
upon foreign and domestic education was part of a horrible and impious system 



4% 2 Treaty of Limerick 

an act to disarm the Catholics,* another to banish their 
priests,f an d, strange as it may appear, they then thought 
proper, in the year 1697, to pass an act to confirm the 
Articles of Limerick. 

Of this act it is to be observed, in the first place, that 
the very title of it is a proof of its injustice, for it is 
styled " An act for the confirmation of articles," and not, 
as it ought to be, " of the articles made at the surrender 
of Limerick." 

The preamble affords further evidence of the intention 
of the framers of it to evade its proper object. It runs 
thus : " That the said articles, or so much of them as may 
consist with the safety and welfare of your majesty's sub- 
jects of this kingdom, may be confirmed," etc. 

But the whole act goes to convict the parliament, and (as 
this parliament was completely under the control of the 
lord-deputy)^ even William himself, of gross injustice to- 
ward the Catholics ; for the first article of the treaty is 

of servitude, the members were well fitted to the body. To render men 
patient under a deprivation of all the rights of human nature, everything which 
could give them a knowledge or feeling of those rights was rationally forbid- 
den. To render humanity fit to be insulted, it was fit that it should be degraded. 
Indeed, I have ever thought the prohibition of the means of improving our 
rational nature to be the worst species of tyranny that the insolence and per- 
verseness of mankind ever dared to exercise." 

* See 7 William III, c. 5. See sec. 8, Catholic Apprentices. 

t See 9 William III, c. i. This act for the banishment of priests was enforced 
rigorously. " It appears/' says Mr. Matthew O'Connor (" Hist.," p. 145), " from 
Captain South's account, that in 1698 the number of regular priests amounted 
to four hundred and ninety-five, the number of seculars to eight hundred and 
ninety-two, and that the number of regulars shipped off in that year to foreign 
parts was four hundred and twenty-four. Some few, disabled by age and infirmi- 
ties from emigration, sought shelter in caves, or implored and received conceal- 
ment and protection of Protestants, whose humane feelings were superior to their 
prejudices." "There was not/' says Dr. Bourke, in his Hstory of the Irish 
Dominicans, p. 155, "a single house of that order in Ireland which was not 
suppressed." 

\ •'•' He (Lord Capel, the lord-deputy) carried the projects of the crown in 
parliament, and was recommended as an excellent governor, in a special 
address sent by the Commons to the king." — " Macpherson's Hist.,'' II, 94. 



In the Reign of William II L 483 

wholly omitted, which guarantees to the Catholics the 
free exercise of their religion, and an exemption from all 
disturbance on account of it ; and each clause of the act 
has the effect of limiting the terms of the other articles, 
and depriving the Catholics of the benefit of them, instead 
of ratifying and confirming them. 

The first clause, which refers at once to the second 
article, explains who are entitled to the benefit of it, and 
the rights conferred upon them; assuming as a fact, for 
which there could be no foundation, that this article 
required explanation. With respect to the persons 
entitled to the benefit of the treaty, a most remarkable 
difference occurs between the words of the second 
article and those of this clause, in describing them. In 
the ratification of the treaty by William, there is the 
following passage : " And whereas it appears to us 
that it was agreed between the parties to the said 
articles that after the words, Limerick, Clare, Kerry, 
Cork and Mayo, or any of them, in the second of the 
said articles the words following, viz., "And all such as 
are under their protection in the said counties,' should 
be inserted, and be part of the said article ; our further 
will and pleasure is, and we do ratify and confirm the 
said omitted words." 

These words, according even to the strict letter of the 
article, extended the benefit of the treaty to the whole 
Catholic population of these counties, which certainly 
was the object of the treaty, as it may be collected 
from the preamble to it, in which it is stated that the Irish 
generals acted in behalf of the Irish inhabitants of these 
counties. But in this clause of the act of parliament to 
confirm the treaty these words are omitted ; and therefore 
the benefit of the treaty is limited, by this explanatory and 
confirmatory act, to the Irish army and the inhabitants of 
the city of Limerick, and a few more garrison towns, — a 
limitation in every respect most perfidious and wholly 



484 Treaty of Limerick 

unjustifiable upon any plea of ambiguity in the language 
of the article, even if such a plea could for a moment 
be allowed. 

This act for confirming the treaty wholly omits that 
part of the second article which guarantees to the Cath- 
olics the exercise of their several trades and professions. 
It also omits the fourth article. It limits the benefit of 
the indemnity, granted by the sixth article, to a period 
subsequent to the 10th of April, 1689, and enables all 
persons who suffered any injuries between the 5th of 
November, 1688, and this period, to bring their actions 
for the same until the 1st of September, 169 1, by declar- 
ing that the commencement of the war referred to in the 
article was the 10th of April, 1689, and not the 5th of 
November, 1688, and it omits the seventh, eighth, ninth 
and tenth articles ; being, in short, an act that, under 
the name of conferring favors upon the Catholics, really 
placed them in a worse condition than that in which they 
were placed before it passed into a law. 

Thirteen peers, including six bishops, entered a protest 
to this bill. It states : " We, the lords spiritual and tem- 
poral, whose names are hereunto subscribed, do dissent 
from the aforesaid vote, and enter our protest against the 
same, for the reasons following: 1st. Because we think 
the title of the bill doth not agree with the body thereof ; 
the title being 'An act for the confirmation of articles 
made at the surrender of Limerick,' whereas no one of 
the articles is therein, as we conceive, fully confirmed. 
2dly. Because the said articles were to be confirmed in 
favor of them to whom they were granted, but the con- 
firmation of them by the bill is such that it puts them; in 
a worse condition than they were before, as we conceive. 
3dly. Because the bill omits these material words, * And 
such as are under their protection in the said counties/ 
which are, by his majesty's letters-patent, declared to be 
part of the second article, and several persons' have been 



hi the Reign of William II L 48 5 

adjudged within the said second article accordingly, who 
will, if this bill passeth into a law, be entirely barred 
and excluded from any benefit of the said second article 
by virtue of the afore-mentioned words ; so that the 
words omitted being so very material, and confirmed by 
his majesty, after a solemn debate in council, as we are 
informed, some express reason, as we conceive, ought 
to have been assigned in the bill, in order to satisfy the 
world as to that omission. 4thly. Because several words 
are inserted in the bill which are not in the articles, 
and others omitted which alter the sense and meaning 
of some parts of the articles, as we conceive. 5thly. 
Because we apprehend that many Protestants may and 
will suffer b}^ this bill, in their just rights and pretensions, 
by reason of their having purchased and lent money 
upon the credit of the said articles, and, we conceive, in 
several other respects." The other acts of this reign re- 
lating to the Catholics are : an act to prevent Protestants 
from intermarrying with Papists,* and an act to prevent 
them from being solicitors. f A clause was introduced in 
an act for the preservation of game, prohibiting Papists 
from being employed as gamekeepers.^ 

How it is possible to defend William and his ministers 
from the charge of having acted with perfidy toward 
the Catholics, it is not easy to discover. That they were 
guilty of violating the treaty, no one can deny. Why 
did he not refuse his consent to these laws, on the ground 
of their being contrary to his solemn engagements to the 
Catholics? He had exercised this prerogative in the 
case of one Scotch § and one English bill.| But even 
this extremity might have been avoided, because the law 
of Poynings required that every bill should be approved 

* 9 William III, c. 3. 1 10 William III, c. 13. % Ibid., c. 8. 

§ For excluding from any public trust all such as had been concerned in 
the encroachments of the late reign. 

|| Concerning free and impartial proceedings in parliament. 



486 Treaty of Limerick in the Reign of William IIL\ 

by the king and council of England, before it could 
pass the House of Commons ; and if a bill was exception- 
able, by withholding their approbation, — a very common 
proceeding, — it fell, of course, to the ground. But, if 
William and his ministers were guilty of perfidy to- 
ward the Catholics, his successor far outstripped him, 
nor has any succeeding prince been free from the blame 
of having been accessory to his misconduct, in proportion 
as he has neglected or refused to repeal those penal laws, 
which are so many glaring violations of the Treaty of 
Limerick, and a scandal to the boasted good faith of the 
English nation. 



PENAL LAWS 



Reign of Anne. 

1701-1714. 

On the 4th of March, 1704, the royal assent was given 
to the act to prevent the further growth of Popery, 
being the first of those two famous acts which have, most 
deservedly, been termed by Mr. Burke " the ferocious 
acts of Anne." 

By the third clause of this act, the Popish father, 
though he may have acquired his estate by descent from 
a long line of ancestors, or by his own purchase, is 
deprived of the power, — in case his eldest son, or any 
son, become a Protestant, — to sell, mortgage, or otherwise 
dispose of it, or to leave out of it any portion of legacies. 

By the fourth clause, the Popish father is debarred, 
under a penalty of £500, from being a guardian, or from 
having the custody of his own children ; but if the 
child, though ever so young, pretend to be a Protestant, 
it is to be taken from its own father, and put into the 
hands of a Protestant relation. 

The fifth clause provides that no Protestant shall 
marry a Papist having an estate in Ireland, either in or 
out of the kingdom. 

The sixth clause renders Papists incapable of purchas- 
ing any manors, tenements, hereditaments, or any rents 



488 Penal Laws 

or profits arising from out of the same, or of holding 
any lease of lives, or other lease whatever, for any term 
exceeding thirty-one years. Even with respect to this 
advantage, restrictions are imposed on them : one of 
which is, that, if a farm produced a profit greater than one- 
third of the amount of the rent, the right of holding it was 
immediately to cease, and to pass over entirely to the first 
Protestant who should discover the rate of profit. 

The seventh clause deprives Papists of such inheritance, 
devise, gift, remainder, or trust, of any lands, tenements, 
or hereditaments, of which any Protestant was or should 
be seized in fee simple, absolute, or fee-tail, which, by the 
death of such Protestant or his wife, ought to have de- 
scended to his son or other issue in tail, being Papists, 
and makes them descend to the nearest Protestant rela- 
tion, as if the Popish heir and other Popish relations 
were dead. 

By the tenth clause, the estate of a Papist, for want of 
a Protestant heir, is to be divided, share and share alike, 
among all his sons ; for want of sons, among his daughters ; 
and for want of daughters, among the collateral kindred 
of the father. 

By the fifteenth clause, no person shall be exempt from 
the penalties of this act that shall not take and subscribe 
the oath and declaration required by this act to be taken. 

By the sixteenth clause, any persons whatsoever who 
shall receive any office, civil or military, shall take and 
subscribe the oath and declaration required to be taken by 
the English act of 3d William and Mary, and also the oath 
and declaration required to be taken by another English 
act of 1st Anne; also, shall receive the sacrament.* 

* Upon this clause of the bill, the Protestant Bishop Burnett makes the 
following observations: "A clause was added (in England) which they (the 
Roman Catholics) hoped would hinder its being accepted in Ireland. The 
matter was carried on so secretly that it was known to none but those who were 
at the council, till the news of it came from Ireland,, upon its being sent 



hi the Reign of Anne. 489 

The twenty-third clause provides that no Papist, 
except under certain conditions, shall dwell in Limerick 
or Gal way. 

The twenty-fourth clause, that no persons shall vote at 
elections without taking the oaths of allegiance and 
abjuration. 

And the twenty-fifth clause, that all advowsons pos- 
sessed by Papists shall be vested in her majesty. 

The Catholics, who had submitted in silence to all the 
unjust transgressions of the last reign, felt it necessary, 
when this act was first brought before parliament, to use 
their utmost exertions to prevent it from passing into a 
law. They, however, appealed in vain to the English 
cabinet to respect the solemn engagements of the Treaty 
of Limerick, and were obliged to have recourse to a 
petition to the Irish parliament. 

Sir Theobald Butler was heard as counsel for the 
petitioners, at the bar of the House of Commons, on the 
22d February, 1703. He stated " that the bill would 
render null and void the articles of Limerick; that those 
articles had been granted for the valuable consideration 
of the surrender of the garrison at a time when the 
Catholics had the sword in their hand, and were in a 
condition to hold out much longer, and when they had 
it in their power to demand and make such terms as 
might be for their own future liberty, safety, and security ; 
that the allowing of the terms contained in these articles 
was highly advantageous to the government to which 
they submitted, as well for uniting the people who 
were then divided, quieting and settling the distractions 
and disorders of this miserable kingdom, as for the other 

thither. It was hoped, by those who got this clause added to the bill, that 
those in Ireland who promoted it would be less fond of it when it had such a 
weight hung to it." — Hist, v, ii. p. 24. 

This clause has since been called the Sacramental Test, the first imposed 
on Dissenters in Ireland. It was repealed without any opposition in the 
Sessions of 1782. 



49° Penal Laws 

advantages which the government would thereby re^p 
in its own affairs, both at home and abroad, when its 
enemies were so powerful, both by sea and land, as to 
render the peace and settlement of these countries a 
circumstance of great uncertainty ; that these articles 
were ratified by their late majesties for themselves, their 
heirs, and successors, and the public faith thereby plight- 
ed to all those comprised in these articles, in the most 
binding manner it was possible for faith to be plighted, 
and than which nothing could be more sacred and 
solemn ; that, therefore, to violate and break those articles 
would, on the contrary, be the greatest injustice possible 
for any one people of the whole world to inflict upon 
another, and contrary to both the laws of God and man." 
He then proceeded to show that the clauses of the bill 
which take away from Catholics the right to purchase, 
bequeath, sell, and inherit estates, were infringements of 
the second article of the treaty ; that the ninth clause of 
the bill, imposing upon Catholics new oaths, was another 
manifest breach of the articles ; for that, by the ninth 
article, no oath is to be administered to, nor imposed 
upon, such Catholics as should submit to government, but 
the oath of allegiance, appointed by an act made in Eng- 
land in the first year of the reign of their late majesties; 
that the clauses for prohibiting Catholics from residing 
in Limerick or Gal way, from voting at elections without 
taking certain new oaths, and from possessing advowsons, 
were likewise infringements on the treaty: " For, if," 
concludes Sir Theobald Butler, "there were no law in 
force in the reign of Charles II against these things, as 
there certainly was not, and if the Roman Catholics of 
this kingdom have not since forfeited their right to the 
laws that then were in force, as for certain they have not, 
then, with humble submission, all the aforesaid clauses 
and matters contained in this bill, entitled ' An act to 
prevent the further growth of Popery/ are directly 



In the Reign of Anne. 491 

against the plain words and true interest and meaning 
of the said articles, and a violation of the public faith." * 

In consequence of the passing of this act, and of those 
other acts of a similar tendency which were passed in 
the last reign, the Catholics were deprived of all those 
privileges and immunities which, they trusted, had been 
secured in consequence of a king of England having 
bound himself, his heirs, and successors, to fulfil the 
conditions of the Treaty of Limerick. In place of being 
the free subjects of a prince, from whom they were 
taught to expect nothing but justice and mercy, they 
were made the slaves of every one, even of the very 
meanest of their Protestant countrymen. They saw the 
English government, on whom they had claims for protec- 
tion, directing, against their own parliament, its fanatic 
counsels, and confirming its crimes. By the Treaty of 
Limerick, they were left at liberty to educate and to act 
as guardians of their own children ; by the penal laws, 
they can neither send them to be educated abroad, nor 
have them educated at home, nor can they be guardians 
of their own, nor of the children of any other persons. 

By the Treaty of Limerick, the free exercise of their 
religion was guaranteed to them ; by the penal laws, 
their chapels are shut up, their priests are banished, and 
hanged if they return home. 

By the Treaty of Limerick, their noblemen and gentle- 
men were especially allowed the privilege of wearing 
arms, and the whole body were equally entitled to the 
same privilege, because, when it was executed, no law 
existed to the contrary ; by the penal laws, no Catholic 
is permitted to have the use of arms, even of those 
who were specially comprised in the treaty, except a 
very few. 

By the Treaty of Limerick, Catholics might inter- 

* Curry's "Civil Wars of Ireland," vol. ii, p. 387, App. xvi, wherein the 
speech of Sir T. Butler is given at length. 



49 2 Penal Laws 

marry with Protestants ; by the penal laws, this privilege 
is removed. 

By the Treaty of Limerick, the profession of the law 
was open to them ; by these laws, it is taken from them. 

By the Treaty of Limerick, the Catholics could pur- 
chase, sell, bequeath, and inherit landed property ; by 
the penal laws, they can neither purchase, sell, be- 
queath, nor inherit landed property, take annuities for 
lives secured on lands, or any lease of land for more than 
thirty-one years ; nor can they lend money on mortgage,* 
or invest it in public securities. 

By the Treaty of Limerick, the Catholics were left in 
full enjoyment of every political franchise, except that of 
holding offices under government, and of becoming 
members of corporation ; by the penal laws, they canno-; 
vote at vestries, serve on grand juries, act as constables , 
or as sheriffs, or under-sheriffs, be magistrates, vote a/ 
elections, or sit in parliament. f 

By the Treaty of Limerick, they were protected fron> 
being called upon to take any other oaths besides thr* 
oath of allegiance of the ist William and Mary; by tho 
penal laws, they are required to take the oaths of abjura- 
tion and supremacy, and to subscribe declarations against 
the principal tenets of their religious faith. 

By the Treaty of Limerick, they were acknowledged 
as the free subjects of a British king ; by the penal laws, 

* By a construction of Lord Hardwicke. 

t "The exclusion from the law, from grand juries, from sheriffships and 
under-sheriffships, as well as from freedom in any corporation, may subject them 
to dreadful hardships, as it may exclude them wholly from all that is bene- 
ficial, and expose them to all that is mischievous, in a trial by jury. This 
was manifested within my own observation, for I was three times in Ireland, 
from the year 1760 to the year 1 767, where I had sufficient means of information 
concerning the inhuman proceedings (among which were many cruel murders, 
besides an infinity of outrages and oppressions, unknown before in a civilized 
age) which prevailed during that period, in consequence of a pretended con- 
spiracy among Roman Catholics against the king's government/' — Burke's 
Letter to a Peer of Ireland. 



In the Reign of Anne. 493 

the}' are placed in the double capacity of slaves and 
enemies of their Protestant countrymen. 

Had they become mere slaves, they might have 
expected some degree of humane treatment ; but, as the 
policy which made them slaves held them out at the 
same time as the natural and interested enemies of their 
masters, they were doomed to experience all the oppres- 
sion of tyranny, without any of the chances, that other 
slaves enjoy, of their tyrants being merciful from feeling 
their tyranny secure. 

This statement will be sufficient to convince those who 
really form their political opinions upon principles of 
justice, that the penal laws never should have been 
enacted, and that it is the duty of every upright states- 
man to promote the instant repeal of the whole of them, 
because it proves a solemn compact entered into between 
the Catholics and the English government, and the 
breach of that contract by the English government, 
notwithstanding the Catholics fulfilled their part of the 
agreement. How can men gravely and zealously con- 
tribute to make perpetual the. political disabilities of the 
Catholics, which were the base and perfidious means 
adopted by a wicked legislature to influence men's con- 
sciences by corrupt motives, and tempt and bribe them 
to apostasy ? 

As there are, however, no small number of politicians 
who, though they would think it praiseworthy to keep a 
Catholic in a state of slavery, yet would be scandalized 
at the bare idea of breaking faith with him in any affairs 
of barter, particularly if they had already received from 
him their consideration, and that a valuable one, it will 
be necessary to make some further observations upon 
the violation of the Treaty of Limerick, in order that no 
one may have a pretext on which he can escape the fair 
conclusion that ought to be drawn from what has been 
advanced, that the English government and nation are. at 



494 Penal Laivs 

this day, bound to make good to the Catholics of Ireland 
the stipulations contained in that treaty. For, if ever there 
was an instance in which the consideration that formed 
the basis of a treaty should have secured a liberal and 
a just fulfilment, it was the instance of this Treaty of 
Limerick. 

In the course of the three campaigns during which the 
war lasted in Ireland, the English army had been defeated 
on several occasions : in the North, under Schomberg ; 
before Athlone, under Douglass ; and before Limerick, 
under William himself. 

The victory of the Boyne was the result of the personal 
failings of James, not of any deficiency in the number of 
his army, nor of any want of courage on their part. " Ex- 
change kings," said the Irish officers, " and we will once 
more fight the battle." St. Ruth had won the battle of 
Aughrim, and had exclaimed, in an ecstasy of joy, " Now 
will I drive the English to the walls of Dublin," at the 
moment the fatal ball struck him.* And at the time the 
garrison of Limerick capitulated, the Irish army was in 
a condition to hold out at least another campaign, with a 
good prospect of being able to restore the fallen fortunes 
of James. The besieging army had made no impression 
on the principal part of the city ; it was inferior in num- 
bers to that of the garrison ; winter was fast approach- 
ing, and it so happened that French succors were at this 
very moment on the coast: yet all these advantages did 
the Irish army forego, in consideration of the terms which 
were granted them by the Treaty of Limerick. 

On the other hand, in granting these terms, the English 
government and nation obtained advantages of the utmost 
importance to themselves; for, as long as James had a 
powerful army in Ireland,f and nearly one half of the 

*Leland 7 b. vi, cap. 7. 

t 6 ; ooo soldiers actually embarked for France after the surrender of Lim- 
erick. See Dr. Duigenan's " Demands of Romanists/' p. 60. 



In the Reign of Anne. 495 

kingdom under his dominion, the great work of the 
Revolution was neither accomplished nor secured. The 
fair way, therefore, of judging of the value of the Treaty of 
Limerick to England is to consider how far it contributed 
to promote this object. If the Treaty of Limerick in any 
degree led to the establishment of the Revolution, the vast 
importance of this event should incline the people of Eng- 
land to act with justice, at least, toward the Catholics ; 
but if their submission contributed essentially to crown 
the brilliant efforts of the friends of liberty with success, 
then, indeed, the people of England should feel zealous 
to act toward the Catholics, not on a cold calculation of 
what was merely just on their part, but with that kind- 
ness with which we always regard those who have pro- 
moted our prosperity, whether intentionally or not. That 
the submission of the Irish Catholics did so contribute 
to complete the Revolution is plain, from the means 
which they possessed of continuing the war, from the 
opportunity it afforded William to bring his whole forces 
to bear against Louis, and from the termination it fixed to 
the hopes and the conspiracies of the adherents of James 
of England. Yet, notwithstanding the great conces- 
sions which the Catholics on their part made, by their 
submission, in order to obtain the terms of the Treaty 
of Limerick, and the great advantages which the Eng- 
lish nation, on the other hand, acquired by it, twelve 
years only elapsed before the Catholics were deprived 
of every right and privilege which was solemnly guar- 
anteed to them by that treaty. 

The only species of justification that could, under any 
circumstances, have been brought forward for acting in 
this manner toward the Catholics, would have been the 
proof of the forfeiture, by misconduct, of their right to 
the fulfilment of the treaty. That anything which they 
did prior to the treaty could have, in justice, any in- 
liuence on measures passed subsequent to its taking 



496 Penal Laws 

place, is quite impossible, because the treaty admitted 
their acts to be those of open and honorable enemies, 
and specifically pardoned them.* 

As to their conduct afterward, even their most in- 
veterate and most unprincipled enemies did not charge 
them with a single transgression against the state 
from the year 1691 to the year 1704, when the "act to 
prevent the further growth of Popery" was passed. 
And it is very plain that no such charge could be 
maintained, from the paltry attempt that was made in 
parliament to justify this act. It was said " that the 
Papists had demonstrated how and where, since the - 
making of the articles of Limerick, they had addressed 
the queen or government, when all other subjects were 
so doing ; and that any right which they pretended 
was to be taken from them by the bill, was in their 
own power to remedy, by conforming, as in prudence 
they ought to do, and that they ought not to blame 
any but themselves." f 

No circumstance can possibly illustrate more clearly 
the innocence of the Catholics and their loyalty and 
good conduct, from the Treaty of Limerick to the passing 
of this act, than this mockery of justification ; nor could 
anything bring to our understanding an accurate compre- 
hension of the perfidy and baseness of that government 

*"The peculiar situation of that country," (Ireland), says Macpherson, 
"seems to have been overlooked in the contest. The desertion, upon which 
the deprivation of James had been founded in England, had not existed in 
Ireland. The lord-lieutenant had retained his allegiance ; the government 
was uniformly continued under the name of the prince from whom the ser- 
vants of the crown had derived their commissions ; James himself had, for 
more than seventeen months, exercised the royal function in Ireland. He was 
certainly de facto, if not de jtire, king. The rebellion of the Irish must, there- 
fore, be founded on the supposition that their allegiance is transferable by the 
parliament of England. A speculative opinion can scarcely justify the punish- 
ment of a great majority of a people. The Irish ought to have been considered 
as enemies, rather than rebels." — "Hist. Great Britain." 

t Curry, "Debates on the Popery Laws," vol. ii, p. 397. 



In the Reign of Anne. 497 

and of that parliament more distinctly than so silly an 
excuse for such stern and crafty oppression. 

Though the Treaty of Limerick was now violated in 
every point, the spirit of persecution was still restless and 
unsatisfied. However great was the ingenuity of the 
legislators who produced the masterpiece of oppression, 
the "act to prevent the further growth of Popery," it 
was found that another act was still wanting to explain 
and amend it. Such an act was passed in the year 1709.* 

The' first clause provides that no Papist shall be 
allowed to take any annuity for life. 

The following is the third clause, every word of which 
is of value, in order to show the vexations to which the 
unfortunate Catholics of Ireland have been exposed : — 

" And be it further enacted, by the authority aforesaid, 
that where and as often as any child or children of any 
Popish parent or parents hath or have heretofore pos- 
sessed or conformed him, her, or themselves to the Pro- 
testant religion as by law established, and enrolled in the 
High Court of Chancery a certificate of the bishop of the 
diocese in which he, she, or they shall inhabit or reside, 
testifying his, her, or their being a Protestant, and con- 
forming him, her, or themselves to the Church of Ireland 
as by law established, it shall and may be lawful for the 
High Court of Chancery, upon a bill founded upon this act, 
to oblige the said Papists, parent or parents, to discover 
upon oath the full value of all his, her, or their estate, as 
well personal as real, clear, over and above all real in- 
cumbrances and debts, contracted bona fide, for value or 
consideration, before the enrolment of such certificate, 
and thereupon to make such order for the support and 
maintenance of such Protestant child or children, by the 
distribution of the said real and personal estate to and 
among such Protestant child or children, for the present 
support of such Protestant child or children ; and also to 

* 8 Anne, c. 3. 



49 8 Penal Laws 

and for the portion or portions, and future maintenance 
or maintenances, of such Protestant child or children 
after the decease of such Popish parent or parents, as 
the said court shall judge fit." 

The twelfth clause provides that all converts in public 
employments, members of parliament, barristers, attor- 
neys, or officers of any court of law, shall educate their 
children Protestants. 

By the fourteenth clause, the Popish wife of a Papist, 
having- power to make a jointure, conforming, shall, if 
she survive her husband, have such provision, not ex- 
ceeding the power of her husband, to make a jointure, 
as the chancellor shall adjudge. 

By the fifteenth clause, the Popish wife of a Papist, 
not being otherwise provided for, conforming, shall have 
a proportion out of his chattels, notwithstanding any will 
or voluntary disposition, and the statute 7 William III, 6. 

The sixteenth clause provides that a Papist teaching 
school publicly, or in a private house, or as usher to a 
Protestant, shall be deemed and prosecuted as a Popish 
regular convict. 

The eighteenth clause provides that Popish priests 
who shall be converted shall receive £yz per annum, to 
be levied and paid by grand juries. 

The twentieth clause provides, whimsically enough, 
for the reward of discovering Popish clergy and school- 
masters, viz. : — 

For discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar-general, 
or other person exercising any foreign ecclesiastical 
jurisdiction, £50. 

For discovering each regular clergyman not regis- 
tered, ^"20. 

For discovering each Popish schoolmaster or usher, 

£10* 

* ''The average annual amount of premiums for transporting priests, for six- 
teen years preceding 1745, was ,£127 17s. 4d. The premium ceased after 1745/* 
— Newenham's "View of Ireland," p. 195. 



In the Reign of Anne. 499 

The twenty-first clause empowers two justices to sum- 
mon any Papist of eighteen years of age, and, if he shall 
refuse to give testimony where and when he heard Mass 
celebrated, and who and what persons were present at 
the celebration of it, and likewise touching the residence 
and abode of any priest or Popish schoolmaster, to com- 
mit him to jail, without bail, for twelve months, or until 
he shall pay ^"20. 

By the twenty-fifth clause, no priest can officiate 
except in the parish for which he is registered by 2 
Anne, c. 7. 

The thirtieth clause provides for the discovery of all 
trusts to be undertaken in favor of Papists, and enables 
any Protestant to file a bill in chancery against any per- 
son concerned in any sale, lease, mortgage, or encum- 
brance, in trust for Papists, and to compel him to discover 
the same ; and it further provides that all issues to be 
tried in any action founded upon this act shall be tried 
by none but known Protestants. 

The thirty-seventh clause provides that no Papist in 
trade, except in the linen trade, shall take more than 
two apprentices. 

The following are the other acts passed in this reign 
concerning Catholics ; — 

" An act to prevent Popish clergy from coming into the 
kingdom."* 

" An act for registering Popish clergy," by which all 
the Catholic clergy then in the kingdom were required 
to give in their names and places of abode at the next 
quarter-sessions. By this act they are prohibited from 
employing curates. f 

" An act to amend this act." % 

* 2 Anne, c. 3. 
t 2 Anne, c. 7. 

t 4 Anne, c. 2. See also 6 Anne, c. 16, sec. 6 ; and 8 Anne, c. 3, sec. 26, 
concerning priests marrying Protestants. 



500 Penal Laws 

" An act to explain and amend an act to prevent Papists 
being solicitors or sheriffs," etc.* 

Clauses are introduced into this act, by which Cath- 
olics are prevented from serving- on grand juries, and 
by which, in trials upon any statute for strengthening 
the Protestant interest, the plaintiff might challenge a 
Papist: which challenge the judge was to allow. 

During all Queen Anne's reign the inferior civil offi- 
cers, by order of government, were incessantly harassing 
the Catholics with oaths, imprisonments and forfeitures, 
without any visible cause but hatred of their religious 
profession. In the year 1708, on the bare rumor of 
an intended invasion of Scotland by the Pretender, 
forty-one Roman Catholic noblemen and gentlemen 
were imprisoned in the Castle of Dublin ; and when 
they were afterward set at liberty, the government was 
so sensible of the wrong done to them, that it remitted 
their fees, amounting to £800. A custom that had 
existed from time immemorial, for infirm men, women 
and children to make a pilgrimage every summer to a 
place called St. John's Well, in the county of Meath, 
in hopes of obtaining relief from their several infirmities, 
by performing at it certain acts of penance and devotion, 
was deemed an object worthy of the serious considera- 
tion of the House of Commons, who accordingly passed 
a vote that these sickly devotees " were assembled in that 
place to the great hazard and danger of the public 
peace and safety of the kingdom." They also passed 
a vote on the 17th March, 1705, "that all magistrates, 
and other persons whosoever, who neglected or omitted 
to put them [the penal laws] in due execution, were 
betrayers of the liberties of the kingdom ;"f and in June, 
1705, they resolved " that the saying and hearing of 
Mass by persons who had not taken the oath of abjuration, 
tended to advance the interest of the Pretender; and 

• 6 Anne, c. I. t " Com. Jour.," 3, 289. 



In the Reign of Anne. 501 

that such judges and magistrates as wilfully neglected 
to make diligent inquiry into and discover such wicked 
practices, ought to be looked upon as enemies to her 
majesty's government;"" 55, and upon another occasion 
they resolved " that the prosecuting and informing 
against Papists were an honorable service to the govern- 
ment " f 

* "Coai Jour." 3, 319. t lbT" 



PENAL LAWS 



Reign of George I. 

1714-172;. 

The following acts of parliament were passed in this 
reign, for the purpose of strengthening the system which 
had been adopted by William and Anne for preventing 
the growth of Popery. 

" An act to make the militia of this kingdom more 
useful." * 

By the eleventh and twelfth clauses of this act, the 
horses of the Papists may be seized for the militia. 

By the fourth and eighteenth clauses, Papists are to 
pay double toward raising the militia. 

By the sixteenth clause, Popish housekeepers in a 
city are to find Protestant substitutes. 

" An act to restrain Papists from being high or petty 
constables, and for better regulating the parish watches."f 

" An act for the more effectual prevention of fraudulent 
conveyances, in order to multiply votes for electing 
members to serve in parliament," etc.J 

By the seventh clause of this act, no Papist can vote 
at an election unless he takes the oath of allegiance and 
abjuration. 

" An act for better regulating the town of Galway, and 
for strengthening the Protestant interest therein." § 

* 2 George I, c. 9. 

t lb., c. 19. This act expired in three years, and was not renewed. 

t lb. $4 George I, c. 15. 



Penal Laws in the Reign of George L 503 

" An act for better regulating the corporation of the 
city of Kilkenny, and strengthening the Protestant inter- 
est therein." * 

" An act by which Papists, resident in towns, who shall 
not provide a Protestant watchman to watch in their 
room, shall be subject to certain penalties." f 

By 12 George I, c. 9, sec. 7, no Papist can vote at any 
vestry, held for the purpose of levying or assessing 
money for rebuilding or repairing parish churches. 

These acts of parliament originated in the same spirit 
of persecution which disgraced the reigns of William 
and Anne, and were, like the penal laws against the 
Catholics of those reigns, palpable violations of the 
Treaty of Limerick. 

Though a glimmering of toleration had found its way 
into the councils of England, and given rise to " an 
act for exempting Protestant dissenters of this country 
[Ireland] from certain penalties to which they were 
subject," the Catholics were excluded, by a particular 
clause, from any benefit of it. And though it was in 
this reign that the first act \ passed " for discharging all 
persons in offices and employments from all penalties 
which they had incurred by not qualifying themselves 
pursuant to ' an act to prevent the further growth of 
Popery,' " the favor conferred by it was a favor conferred 
on Protestant dissenters only, as no Catholic had 
been placed in any public office since the passing of that 
penal law. 

The loyalty of the Catholics was in this reign put to a 
complete trial by the Scotch rebellion of 1715. If, after 
having fought three campaigns in support of James's 
pretensions to the throne of Ireland ; after having ex- 
perienced the infractions of every part of the Treaty 
of Limerick, and been exposed to a code of statutes by 
which they were totally excluded from the privileges of 

* 4 George I, c. 16. t 6 George I, c. 10. \ Ib. ; c. 9. 



504 Penal Laws in the Reign of George I. 

the constitution ; and if, after they had become subject 
"to the worst of all oppressions, the persecution of 
private society and private manners," * they had em- 
barked in the cause of the invader, their conduct would 
have been that of a high-spirited nation, goaded into a 
state of desperation by their relentless tormentors; and, 
if their resistance had been successful, their leaders 
would have ranked among the Tells and Washingtons 
of modern history. 

But so far from yielding to the natural dictates of 
revenge, or attempting to take advantage of what was 
passing in Scotland to regain their rights, they did not 
follow the example of their rulers, in violating, upon the 
first favorable opportunity, a sacred and solemn com-^ 
pact ; and thus they gave the strongest testimony that 
they had wholly given up their former hopes of estab- 
lishing a Catholic prince upon the throne. Their loyalty 
was not, however, a protection to them against the 
oppressions of their Protestant countrymen. The penal- 
ties for the exercise of their religion were generally and 
rigidly inflicted. Their chapels were shut up, their 
priests dragged from their hiding-places, hurried into 
prisons, and from thence sent into banishment, f 

* Burke's Letter to a Peer of Ireland. 

t " In 1732 a proclamation was issued against the Roman Catholic clergy, and 
the degree of violence with which it was enforced made many of the old natives 
look seriously, as a last resource, to emigration. Bishop O'Rorke retired from 
Ballinagare, and the gentlemen of that neighborhood had no clergyman for a 
considerable time to give them Mass, but a poor old man, one Pendergast, who, 
before day-dawn on Sunday, crept into a cave in the parish of Baslick, and 
waited there for his congregation, in cold and wet weather, hunger and thirst, 
to preach to them patience under their afflictions, and perseverance in their 
principles, to offer up prayers for theii persecutors, and to arm them with resig- 
nation to the will of heaven in their misfortunes. The cave is called Poll-an- 
Aifrin, or Mass-cave, to this day, and is a melancholy monument of the piety 
of our ancestors " — " Mem. of the Life and Writings of the late Charles O'Con- 
nor," vol. i, p. 179. 



PENAL LAWS 

IN THE 

Reign of George II. 

i 727-1 760. 

In this reign the following disabilities were imposed 
upon the Catholics : — 

By the 1 George II, c. 9, sec. 7, no Papist can vote at 
an election without taking the oath of supremacy. How- 
ever great the oppression which the Catholics had ex- 
perienced during former reigns, this measure completed 
their entire exclusion from the benefits of the constitution, 
and from the opportunity of regaining their former just 
rights. 

It was because this privilege had begun to operate 
amongst Protestants in a manner very favorable to the 
Catholics, and to bring about a feeling of regret for theii 
sufferings, and a coalition between the two parties to 
oppose the influence of the English government, as 
a common cause of grievances, that Primate Boulter 
advised the ministers to pass this law. 

His principle of government for Ireland was to up- 
hold the English interest by the divisions of the inhabi- 
tants ; and on this occasion it induced him to adopt the 
desperate resolution of disfranchising, at one stroke, 
above five-sixths of its population.* 

By the first clause of 1 George II, c. 30, clerks, bar- 

* Primate Boulter, in his letter of this year to the Archbishop of Canterbury 
(vol. i, p. 210J, says : " There are probably in this kingdom five Papists, at least, 
to one Protestant." See note B, Appendix, upon the present amount of the 
population, and the proportion of Catholics to Protestants. 



506 Penal Laws 

risters and citizens occupying other stations in life, are 
required to take the oath of supremacy. 

By the second clause, all converts are bound to edu- 
cate their children as Protestants. 

By 7 George II, c. 5, sec. 12, barristers or solicitors, 
marrying Papists, are deemed Papists, and made sub- 
ject to all penalties as such. 

By 7 George II, c. 6, no convert can act as a justice 
of the peace whose wife, or children under sixteen years 
of age, are educated Papists. 

The 13 George II, c. 6, is an act to amend former acts 
for disarming Papists. 

By the sixth clause of this act, Protestants educating 
their children as Papists are made subject to the samt 
disabilities as Papists are. 

By 9 George II, c. 3, no person can serve on a petty 
jury, unless seized of a freehold of £$ per annum, or, 
being a Protestant, unless possessed of a profit rent of 
£1$ per annum, under a lease for years. 

By 9 George II, c. 6, sec. 5, persons robbed by priva- 
teers, during war with a Popish prince, shall be reim- 
bursed by grand jury presentment, and the money levied 
upon the goods and lands of Popish inhabitants only. 

The 19 George II, c. 5, is an act for granting a duty 
on hawkers and peddlers to the Society of Protestant 
Charter Schools.* 

* The following is the preamble of the charter for erecting these schools : 
"George II by the grace of God, etc. Forasmuch as we have received 
information, by the petition of the lord primate, lord chancellor, archbishops, 
noblemen, bishops, judges, gentry and clergy, of our kingdom of Ireland, 
that in many parts of the said kingdom there are great tracts of land almost 
entirely inhabited by Papists, who are kept by their clergy in great ignorance 
of the true religion, and bred up in great dissatisfaction to the government ; 
that the erecting of English Protestant schools in those places is absolutely 
necessary for their conversion ; that the English parish schools already estab- 
lished are not sufficient for that purpose, nor can the residence of the 
parochial clergy only fully answer that end." Catholics are excluded by this 
charter from being subscribers to, or members of, this society. — See Report of 



In the Reign of George II 507 

The 19 George II, c. 13, is an act to annul all marriages 
between Protestants and Papists, or celebrated by Popish 
priests.* 

By the 23 George II, c. 10, sec. 3, every Popish priest 
who shall celebrate any marriage contrary to 12 George I, 
c. 3, and be therefor convicted, shall be hanged. 

Of these last acts, and of Lord Chesterfield's adminis- 
tration, Mr. Burke gives the following account: " This 
man, while he was duping the credulity of the Papists with 
fine words in private, and commending their good behav- 
ior during a rebellion in Great Britain, as it well deserved 
to be commended and rewarded, was capable of urging 
penal laws against them in a speech from the throne,f and 

Committee of Irish House of Commons, 14 Appendix, 1788 ; Ir. Com. Jour., 12 
Appendix, p. 810. 

The children admitted into the schools are orphans, or the children of Cath- 
olics, and other poor natives of Ireland, who, from their situation in life, are 
not likely to educate them as Protestants. They are apprenticed into Protest- 
ant families at the age of fourteen years, at a fee of seven guineas with each 
female, and five guineas with each male. The society gives a portion of five 
pounds to every person educated in these schools, upon his or her marrying a 
Protestant. 

In September, 1806, the number of children in the schools was 2,130. 

The funds of the society consist of lands, funded property, and an annual 
grant of parliament; they amount to about £34,000 per annum. From the 
year 1754, 31 George II, c. I, to the 1st January, 1808, there has been granted 
by parliament to this society £491,326, besides certain duties on hawkers and 
pedlers, from 1754 to 1786. 

By the 23 George II, c. 2, the society may appoint persons to take up 
beggar children, and send them to the charter schools, and, when old enough, 
bind them apprentices. 

By the same act, sec. 8, a child received with the parents' consent is deemed 
a child of the public, and may be disposed of, though claimed by the parents. 

* The first acts on this head are 6 Anne c. 16, sec. 6, and 8 Anne, c. 3, sec. 26. 

t "The measures that have hitherto been taken to prevent the growth of 
Popery have, I hope, had some, and will still have a greater effect ; however, I 
leave it to your consideration whether nothing further can be done, either by 
new laws or by more effectual execution of those in being, to secure the nation 
against the greater number of Papists, whose speculative errors would only 
deserve pity, if their pernicious influence upon civil society did not both require 
and authorize restraint." — Speech to both Houses of Parliament, October 8, 
1745: Com. Jour., 7, 64. 



5°8 Penal Laws 

of stimulating with provocatives the weary and half- 
exhausted bigotry of the parliament of Ireland. They 
set to work, but they were at a loss what to do, for they 
had already almost gone through every contrivance 
which could waste the vigor of their country ; but, after 
much struggle, they produced a child of their old age, 
the shocking and unnatural act about marriages, which 
tended to finish the scheme for making the people not only 
two distinct parties forever, but keeping them as two 
distinct species in the same land. Mr. Gardiner's human- 
ity was shocked at it, as one of the worst parts of that 
truly barbarous system, if one could well settle the pre- 
ference, where almost all the parts were outrages on the 
rights of humanity and the laws of nations."* 

On the conduct of the Catholics during the Scotch 
rebellion of 1745, fortunately for them, but greatly to the 
shame of those who accuse them of being actuated by 
religious principles inconsistent with their duty to their 
sovereign, there is on record an irrefutable document. 
In the year 1762, upon a debate in the House of Lords 
about the expediency of raising five regiments of Cath- 
olics for the King of Portugal, the Primate, Doctor Stone, 
in answer to the usual objections that were urged on all 
occasions against the good faith and loyalty of that body, 
declared in his place, "that in the year 1747, after that 
rebellion was entirely suppressed, happening to be in 
England, he had an opportunity of perusing all the 
papers of the rebels and their correspondents, which 
were seized in the custody of Murray, the Pretender's 
secretary ; and that, after having spent much time, and 
taken great pains in examining them, not without some 
share of the then common suspicion that there might be 
some private understanding and intercourse between 
them and the Irish Catholics, he could not discover the 
least trace, hint, or intimation of such intercourse or 

* Letter to a Peer in Ireland. 



In the Reign of George II. 509 

correspondence in them, or of any of the latter's favor- 
ing or abetting, or having been so much as made ac- 
quainted with, the designs or proceedings of the rebels. 
And what," he said, " he wondered at most of all was, 
that in all his researches he had not met with any pas- 
sage in any of the papers from which he could infer 
that either their Holy Father, the Pope, or any of his 
cardinals, bishops, or other dignitaries of that Church, 
or any of the Irish clergy, had, either directly or indi- 
rectly, encouraged, aided, or approved of the commenc- 
ing or carrying on of that rebellion.""* 

Those of the clergy of England who lately took so 
active a part in exciting and upholding the infamous 
outcry of " No Popery," will do well to compare this 
declaration of Primate Stone with the following state- 
ment of the conduct of the Irish clergy, immediately 
upon the breaking out of the Scotch rebellion. They 
will learn how easy it is, even for the grave profession 
of the Church, to commit errors, and to pollute its sacred 
character, by embarking in the controversy of party 
politics : " The bishops wrote pastoral letters to their 
respective diocesans, to excite the members of the Estab- 
lished Church to enforce all the penal statutes, and, with 
equal wisdom and charity and a ready obedience, did the 
clergy follow the example and directions of their supe- 
riors, and apply the whole power of their body to support 
the fanatic politics of the day. In their inflammatory 
sermons they excited religious animosity, by reviving 
the most shocking circumstances of the Irish Rebellion 
of 164.1, and of the Gunpowder Plot in England, in 1605. 
These transactions were studiously aggravated, and the 
crimes, whether real or supposed, committed by Cath- 
olics, dead more than a century before, were imputed to 
all those who survived of the same religious persuasion. "f 

* Curry's "Review of the Civil Wars of Ireland," vol. ii, p. 261, 
tlb., p. 259. 



510 Penal Laws 

If the conduct of the bishops and clergy was improper, 
on account of its inconsistency with those principles of 
universal charity that the Gospel inculcated, it was still 
more so from there being no grounds, even of suspicion, 
that the Catholics were disloyal. Besides, it was inde- 
cent, in the last degree, for those who were endowed 
by the state for the purpose only of discharging the 
functions of a religious profession, to degrade their 
sacred character by assuming the duties of partisan 
magistrates, and embarking in all the tumult and passion 
of political persecution. The conduct of the Catholic 
priests at this period forms a contrast by no means 
creditable to those who teach the superior tolerance of 
the Protestant religion, and ground their animosities 
against the Catholics on the supposed illiberality which 
controls their principles. This oppressed and indigent 
body of men, instead of taking offence at the proceedings 
of the bishops and clergy of the Established Church, " co- 
operated with their Protestant brethren to maintain order 
and tranquillity. Their pastoral letters, public discourses 
from the pulpit, and private admonitions, were equally 
directed for the service of the government."* 

Yet these clergy were the members of that Church, 
the principles of which are stated to be of such a nature 
by many of the English clergy as to render it absolutely 
impossible for a Catholic to be a good subject. 

On the 26th September, 1757, the Duke of Bedford was 
sworn in as lord-lieutenant. His open declarations of 
liberal sentiments toward the Catholics, and some com- 
munications, that were made for the first time since the 
passing of the " ferocious act of Anne" to prevent the 
growth of Popery, of an intention to repeal some part 
of the penal laws, encouraged them to hope for a change 
in the system of Irish government. Ten days after his 
arrival, the Catholic clergy of Dublin, influenced by these 

♦Chesterfield's Works, vol. i, p. 150. Ir. Ed. 



In the Reign of George II. 511 

communications, read the following to their respective 
congregations. It forms the first, and a very important, 
document, in proof of the sufferings, the resignation, and 
the loyalty of the Catholic body. It was one peculiarly 
deserving of attention, as being well calculated to re- 
move the ignorance and prejudices of those who still 
persist in calumniating the Catholic clergy of Ireland, 
and representing them as enemies to the king and con- 
stitution : — 

" Exhortation of the Roman Catholic Clergy of Dublin, 
read from their altars on the 2d October, 1757. 

" It is now time, Christians, that you return your most 
grateful thanks to the Almighty God, who, after visiting 
you with a scarcity which approached near to a famine, 
has been graciously pleased, like a merciful father, to hear 
your prayers, and feed you with a plentiful harvest ; 
nor ought you to forget those kind benefactors who, in 
the severest times, mindful only of the public good, 
generously bestowed, without any distinction of persons, 
those large charities by which thousands were pre- 
served, who otherwise must have perished, the victims 
of hunger and poverty. 

" We ought especially to be most earnest in our 
thanks to the chief governors and magistrates of the 
kingdom, and of this city in particular, who, on this oc- 
casion, proved the fathers and saviors of the nation. 

" But as we have not a more effectual method of 
showing our acknowledgments to our temporal gov- 
ernors, than by an humble, peaceful, and obedient 
behavior as hitherto, we earnestly exhort you to 
continue in the same happy and Christian disposition, 
and thus, by degrees, you will entirely efface in their 
minds those evil impressions, which have been conceived 
so much to our prejudice, and industriously propagated 
by our enemies. 

" A series of more than sixty years spent, with pious 



512 Penal Laws 

resignation, under the hardships of very severe penal 
laws, and with the greatest thankfulness for the lenity 
and moderation with which they were executed, ever 
since the accession of the present royal family, is certainly 
a fact which must outweigh, in the minds of all unbiassed 
persons, any misconceived opinions of the doctrines and 
tenets of our holy Church. 

*' You know that it has always been our constant prac- 
tice, as ministers of Jesus Christ, to inspire you with the 
greatest horror for thefts, frauds, murders, and the like 
abominable crimes, as being contrary to the laws of God 
and nature, destructive to civil society, condemned by 
our most holy Church, which, so far from justifying them 
on the score ol religion, or any other pretext whatsoever, 
delivers the unrepenting authors of such criminal prac- 
tices over to Satan. 

" We are no less zealous than ever in exhorting you to 
abstain from cursing, swearing, and blaspheming: detest- 
able vices to which the poorest sort of our people are 
most unhappily addicted, and which must, at one time or 
another, bring down the vengeance of Him upon you in 
some visible punishment, unless you absolutely refrain 
from them. 

" It is probable that from hence some people have taken 
occasion to brand us with this infamous calumny, that 
we need not fear to take false oaths, and consequently to 
perjure ourselves. As if we believed that any power 
upon earth could authorize such damnable practices, or 
grant dispensations for this purpose ! 

" How unjust and cruel this charge is, you know by 
our instruction to you both in public and private, in 
which we have ever condemned such doctrines as false 
and impious. Others, likewise, may easily know it from 
the constant behavior of numbers of Roman Catholics, 
who have given the strongest proofs of their abhorrence 
of those tenets, by refusing to take oaths, which, however 



In the Reign of George II 513 

conducive to their temporal interest, appeared to them 
entirely repugnant to the principles of their religion. 

" We must now entreat you, dear Christians, to offer up 
your most fervent prayers to the Almighty God who 
holds in His hands the hearts of kings and princes : beseech 
Him to direct the counsels of our rulers, to inspire 
them with sentiments of moderation and compassion 
toward us. 

" We ought to be more earnest at this juncture in our 
supplications to heaven, as some very honorable persons 
have encouraged us to hope for a mitigation of the penal 
laws. Pray, then, the Almighty to give a blessing to these 
their generous designs, and to aid their counsels in such 
a manner that, whilst they intend to assist us, like kind 
benefactors, they may not, contrary to their intentions, by 
mistaking the means, most irretrievably destroy us. 

" To conclude : be just in your dealings, sober in your 
conduct, religious in your practices, avoid riots, quarrels, 
and tumults, and thus you will approve yourselves good 
citizens, peaceable subjects, and pious Christians." 

Instead, however, of a repeal taking place of any of 
the penal laws, rumors began very generally to prevail 
of its being the intention of the government to proceed 
to carry into effect a bill that had been prepared by the 
former administration for altering the law respecting 
the registry of the clergy. The existing law, which 
passed in the reign of Queen Anne, had been found too 
penal to admit of its being carried into execution, and 
thus, by an excess of tyranny, was the object of it wholly 
defeated. In the place of this law, it had been proposed 
to pass one with such provisions that it should, like the 
other penal laws, execute itself; and upon this project 
being now revived, the Catholics, for the first time since 
1704, took measures, as a body, to indicate their religious 
and civil principles. Mr. Charles O'Connor, the cele- 
brated Irish scholar and antiquarian, with the assistance 



514 Penal Laws 

of Dr. Curry, author of the " Review of the Civil Wars 
of Ireland," and Mr. Wyse, of Waterford, exerted them- 
selves with good effect in persuading- their suffering- 
countrymen of the necessity of coming forward to induce 
their rulers to admit them into a participation of the 
privileges of the constitution. As a groundwork of their 
future labor, Dr. O'Keefe, the titular Bishop of Kildare, 
proposed, at a meeting held at Lord Timbleton's, a 
declaration of the principles of their Church, as far as 
they could bear upon the civil duties, to be signed by 
the chiefs of their body, and published as an answer to 
the misrepresentations and calumnies they had labored 
under since the reformation of the national religion. This 
declaration was unanimously adopted ; it was signed by 
many clergymen and gentlemen of rank and property 
and sent to Rome as the act and deed of the Irish Cath- 
olics. It is as follows : — 

" Whereas, certain opinions and principles, inimical to 
good order and government, have been attributed to 
the Catholics, the existence of which we utterly deny ; 
and whereas it is at this time peculiarly necessary to 
remove such imputations, and to give the most full and 
ample satisfaction to our Protestant brethren, that we 
hold no principles whatever, incompatible with our duty 
as men or as subjects, or repugnant to liberty, whether 
political, civil, or religious : 

" Now we, the Catholics of Ireland, for the removal of 
all such imputations, and in deference to the opinion of 
many respectable bodies of men and individuals among 
our Protestant brethren, do hereby, in the face of our 
country, of all Europe, and before God, make this our 
deliberate and solemn declaration : — 

" 1. We abjure, disavow, and condemn the opinion 
that princes, excommunicated by the pope and councilor 
by any ecclesiastical authority whatsoever, may there- 
fore be deposed or murdered by their subjects or any 



In the Reign of George II 515 

other person. We hold such doctrine in detestation as 
wicked and impious, and we declare that we do not 
believe that either the pope, with or without a general 
council, or any prelate or priest, or any ecclesiastical 
power whatsoever, can absolve the subjects of this 
kingdom, or auy of them, from their allegiance to His 
Majesty, King George III, who is, by authority of par- 
liament, the lawful king of this realm. 

" 2. We abjure, condemn and detest, as unchristian 
and impious, the principle that it is lawful to murder, 
destroy, or anyways injure any persons whomsoever, for, 
or under, the pretence of being heretics ; and we declare 
solemnly before God that we believe that no act in itself 
unjust, immoral, or wicked, can be justified or excused 
by, or under, pretence or color that it was done either for 
the good of the Church, or in obedience to any ecclesi- 
astical power whatsoever. 

" 3. We further declare that we hold it as an unchris- 
tian and impious principle that no faith is to be kept with 
heretics. The doctrine we detest and reprobate, not 
only as contrary to our religion, but as destructive of 
morality, of society, and even of common honesty ; and 
it is our firm belief that an oath made to any person, not 
of the Catholic religion, is equally binding as if it were 
made to any Catholic whomsoever. 

"4. We have been charged with holding, as an article 
of our belief, that the pope, with, or without, the authority 
of a general council, or by certain ecclesiastical powers, 
can acquit and absolve us before God from our oath of 
allegiance, or even from the just oaths and contracts 
entered into between man and man. 

" Now we do utterly renounce, abjure, and deny that 
we hold or maintain any such belief, as being contrary 
to the peace and happiness of society, inconsistent with 
morality, and, above all, repugnant to the true spirit of 
the Catholic religion. 



516 Penal Laws 

" 5. We do further declare that we do not believe 
that the Pope of Rome, or any other prince, prelate, 
state, or potentate, hath, or ought to have, any temporal 
or civil jurisdiction, power, superiority, or preeminence, 
directly or indirectly, within this realm. 

" 6. After what we have renounced, it is immaterial, in 
a political light, what may be our opinion of faith on 
other points respecting the pope ; however, for greater 
satisfaction, we declare that it is not an article of the 
Catholic faith, neither are we hereby required to believe 
or profess, that the pope is infallible, or that we are 
bound to obey any order, in its own nature immoral, 
though the pope, or any ecclesiastical power, should 
issue or direct such order, but, on the contrary, we hold 
that it would be sinful in us to pay any respect or 
obedience thereto. 

" 7. We further declare that we do not believe that any 
sin whatsoever committed by us can be forgiven at the 
mere will of any pope, or of any priest, or of any person 
or persons whomsoever ; but that sincere sorrow for 
past sins, a firm and sincere resolution, as far as may be 
in our power, to restore our neighbor's property or 
character, if we have trespassed, or unjustly injured 
either; a firm and sincere resolution to avoid future 
guilt, and to atone to God, are previous and indispensable 
requisites to establish a well-founded expectation of 
forgiveness ; and that any person who receives absolution 
without these previous requisites, so far from obtaining 
thereby any remission of his sins, incurs the additional 
guilt of violating a sacrament. 

11 8. We do hereby solemnly disclaim and forever 
renounce all interests in, and title to, all forfeited lands 
resulting from any rights, or supposed rights, of our 
ancestors, or any claim, title, or interest therein ; nor do 
we admit any title as a foundation of right, which is not 
established and acknowledged by the laws of the realm 



In the Reign of George II. 517 

as the) 7 now stand. We desire, further, that whenever 
the patriotism, liberality, and justice of our countrymen 
shall restore to us a participation in the elective franchise, 
no Catholic shall be permitted to vote at any election 
for members to serve in parliament until he shall pre- 
viously take an oath to defend to the utmost of his power 
the arrangement of property in this country, as estab- 
lished by the different acts of attainder and settlement. 

"9. It has been objected to us that we wish to subvert 
the present Church establishment, for the purpose of 
substituting a Catholic establishment in its stead. Now, 
we do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure 
any such intention ; and further, if we shall be admitted 
into any share of the constitution, by our being restored 
to the right of elective franchise, we are read)'', in the 
most solemn manner, to declare that we will not exercise 
that privilege to disturb and weaken the establishment 
of the Protestant religion or Protestant government in 
this country." 

Though this declaration did not produce any change 
of conduct on the part of the English government at that 
time, its failure can be attributed only to the obstinacy 
with which the principle of governing Ireland, upon the 
system of separate interests between the Protestants and 
Catholics, was adhered to. This declaration, though at 
first ineffectual, was republished in 1792, and may surely 
be expected at least to open the eyes of mankind to the 
true character of the Irish Catholics, and to secure to 
them the reward which it deserves : the unlimited con- 
fidence of their king and fellow-subjects, and the entire 
restoration of their constitutional rights. 

In the year 1759, when it was known that a French 
force, under the command of Conflans, was collected to 
invade Ireland, the conduct of the Catholics on this, as it 
had uniformly been on similar occasions, was loyal in the 
extreme. Mr. O'Connor, Dr. Curry, and Mr. Wyse had, 



5 18 Penal Laws 

some time before, in 1757, succeeded in establishing a gen- 
eral committee of the Catholic body, formed by delegates 
of parishes, and the principal Catholic nobility and gentry. 
As soon as this invasion was announced in parliament 
by a message from the Duke of Bedford, this committee 
was summoned to meet ; and Mr. O'Connor having sub- 
mitted to it the following address to the lord-lieutenant, 
it was unanimously approved of: — ■ 

" May it please your grace : 

" We, his majesty's dutiful and faithful subjects, the 
Roman Catholic gentlemen, merchants, and citizens of 
Dublin, do, with the greatest respect, approach the illus- 
trious representative of the best of kings with our hearty 
congratulations on those glorious successes, by sea and 
land, which have attended his majesty's arms, in the 
prosecution of this just and necessary war. 

" We gratefully acknowledge the lenity extended to 
us by his most sacred majesty, and by his royal father, 
of happy memory. Our allegiance, may it please your 
grace, is confirmed by affection and gratitude, our relig- 
ion commands it, and it shall be our invariable rule 
firmly and inviolably to adhere to it. 

" We are called to this duty at the present time in 
particular, when a foreign enemy is meditating des- 
perate attempts to interrupt the happiness and disturb 
the repose which these kingdoms have so long enjoyed 
-under a monarch who places his chief glory in proving 
himself the common father of all his people ; and we 
sincerely assure your grace that we are ready and 
willing, to the utmost of our abilities, to assist in 
supporting his majesty's government against all hostile 
attempts whatsoever. 

" Whenever, my lord, it shall please the Almighty 
that the legislative power of this realm shall deem the 
peaceable conduct of his majesty's Catholic subjects in 



In the Reign of George II. 5 19 

Ireland, for many years past, an object worthy of its 
favorable attention, we humbly hope means may be 
devised to render so numerous a body more useful 
members to the community, and more strengthening- 
friends to the state, than they possibly could have hither- 
to been under the restraint of the many penal laws 
against them. We most humbly beseech your grace to 
represent to his majesty these sentiments and resolutions 
of his majesty's faithful subjects, the Roman Catholics of 
this metropolis, who sincerely wish that a peace honor- 
able to his majesty, and advantageous to his kingdom, 
may be the issue of the present war, and that the people 
of Ireland may be long governed by your grace, a viceroy 
in whom wisdom, moderation, and justice are so emi- 
nently conspicuous." 

On that occasion, also, wealthy individual members of 
the Catholic body offered to accommodate the govern- 
ment with large sums of money in case of necessity, to 
support the Protestant Establishment against all its 
enemies; and the Catholics of the city of Cork, in a 
body, presented an address to the lord-lieutenant, 
expressing their loyalty in the warmest terms of assur- 
ance. They professed the warmest indignation at the 
threatened invasion of the kingdom by an enemy vainly 
flattered with the imaginary hope of assistance in Ire- 
land from the former attachment of their predecessors. 
They assured his grace that such schemes were altogether 
inconsistent with their principles and intentions, and 
that they would, to the utmost exertion of their abilities, 
with their lives and fortunes, join in the defence and 
support of his majesty's royal person and government 
against all invaders whatsoever.* 

These circumstances are proof of no ordinary fidelity 
in the Irish Catholics to the house of Brunswick. They 

* Smollett's " History of England," vol. iv, p. 69. 



520 Penal Laws in the Reign of George II. 

were, however, of no avail in mitigating the rigor 
of the magistracy in the execution of the penal laws, or 
in inducing the British government to repeal any part 
of them, for the reign of George II closed, without any 
grateful acknowledgments being made to them for the 
steadiness, the moderation, and the loyalty which they 
had displayed on so many trying occasions. 



PENAL LAWS 

IN THE 

Reign of George III. 

1 760- 1 820. 

THOUGH the first measure of this reign, the royal 
recommendation to Parliament to make the judges inde- 
pendent of the crown, bespoke the determination of his 
majesty to respect the feelings and confirm the rights 
and liberties of his subjects, still the unfortunate Cath- 
olics of Ireland were doomed to suffer under new pains 
and penalties. 

In the year 1776 an act- of parliament was passed,* by 
which one or more justices of the peace, and all sheriffs 
and chief magistrates of cities and towns corporate, with- 
in their respective jurisdictions may, from time to time, 
as well by night as by day, search for and seize all 
arms and ammunition belonging to any Papist not en- 
titled to keep the same, or in the hands of any person in 
trust for a Papist; and for that purpose enter any dwell- 
ing-house, out-houses, office, field, or other place belong- 
ing to a Papist, or to any other person where such 
magistrate has reasonable cause to suspect any such arms 
or ammunition to be concealed, and on suspicion, after 
search, may summon and examine on oath the person 
suspected of such concealment. 

By the seventeenth clause of this act, Papists refusing 

* 15 and 16 George TIT, c. II, sec. 15. 



522 Penal Laws 

to deliver up or declare such arms as they, or any with 
their privity, have in their possession, or hindering their 
delivery, or refusing to discover on oath, or, without 
cause, neglecting to appear on summons to be examined 
before a magistrate concerning the same, shall, on con- 
viction, be punished by fine and imprisonment, or such 
corporal punishment of pillory or whipping as the court 
shall, in their discretion, think proper. 

In the year 1782 a clause was introduced into an act* 
by which no person shall be admitted into the society of 
King's Inns as a student, who shall not, at the time of 
his admission, be a Protestant. 

In the same year an act was passed, by the third 
clause of which all statutes in England or Great Britain, 
and all such clauses and provisions contained in any 
statute there made as relate to the taking of any oath or 
oaths, or making or subscribing any declaration in Ire- 
land, or to any penalty or disability of omitting the 
same, shall be accepted, used, and executed in Ireland. 

This act referred to : first, the English f act of 3 Wil- 
liam and Mary, c. 2, sees. 1, 4, 5, 6, 7, by which the oath 
of supremacy mentioned in 2 Elizabeth, 1, c. 1, is abro- 
gated, and a new oath of supremacy is required to be 
taken by all persons admitted into Ireland to hold any 
civil or military office, and by members of both houses 
of parliament ; second, to the English act of 1 Anne, 
stat. 2, c. 17, requiring all persons to take the oath of 
abjuration prescribed by the English acts of 13 William 
III, c. 6, and 1 Anne, stat. 1, c. 22 ; third, to the English 
act of 6 George III, c. 53, sec. 2, declaring that from the 
1st August, 1776, the oath of abjuration, by this act ap- 
pointed to be taken in Great Britain, shall be the oath of 
abjuration to be taken in Ireland. 

Though this clause of the 21 and 22 George III, 

* 21 and 22 George III, c. 32, sec. 2. 
t lb., c. 48, sec. 3. 



In the Reign of George TIL 523 

c. 48, has attracted very little public attention, it was 
of no less import than that of being the first legal ex- 
clusion of Catholics from sitting in the Irish parliament. 
They had been excluded de facto by their voluntary 
submission to the English act of 3 William and Mary, but 
not de jure till this act of 21 and 22 George III, which 
made the act of 3 William and Mary, just mentioned, 
binding: in Ireland.* 

This circumstance, which has always been overlooked, 
even by the Catholics themselves, proves how readily they 
have been inclined, at all times, to submit to the authority 
of government ; and it also proves how unfounded those 
arguments are which maintain that the exclusion of the 
Catholics of Ireland from parliament is a principle on 
which the family of his majesty was placed upon the 
throne. It completely overturns the system of erroneous 
reasoning concerning the coronation oath, which of 
late had been so common; it reduces the question to 
this simple point: whether the king can conscientiously 
place the Catholics of Ireland in the same condition, 
with respect to sitting in parliament, in which they had 
continued till the twenty-second year of his own reign. 

In 1785 an act was passed* for granting £4,000, to be 
expended in apprentice fees, to such tradesmen or manu- 

* The first Irish parliament summoned by William having met on the 5th 
October, 1692, immediately after the election of a speaker, and his being seated, 
" A motion was made for the reading of a late act of parliament, made in 
England in the third year of their majesties' reign, entitled 'An act for abro- 
gating the oath of supremacy in Ireland, and appointing other oaths ;' upon 
reading whereof the house immediately proceeded to the swearing of their 
members, and. they being sworn, the house adjourned." (Irish Com. Jour., vol. 2, 
p. 9.) " It does not appear by the journals that any objection was made to this 
motion, or that any Catholic had been elected to serve in this parliament, 
notwithstanding this English act was not binding in Ireland ; nor is any 
mention made by the historians of that day concerning the grounds upon 
which the Catholics submitted to it. The submissive forbearance of them un- 
der a most severe extension of the penal code is the only point relating to 
them which has arrested their notice." — Plowden, vol, I, p. 198. 

* 25 George III, c. 48, sees. 11, 12. 



524 Penal Laws 

facturers, as should take children from charter schools 
or the Foundling Hospital ; but it was expressly pro- 
vided that the children should be bound to none but 
Protestant tradesmen and manufacturers. 

The whole code of the penal statutes against the 
Catholics of Ireland is now laid before the view of the 
reader, under which they so long and so patiently 
languished, — statutes unexampled for their inhumanity, 
their unwarrantableness and their impolicy, which were 
adopted to exterminate a race of men already crushed 
and broken by the longest series of calamities which 
one nation had ever the opportunity of inflicting upon 
another. 

They were framed against Christians under the 
pretence of securing religion • they were the work of 
Protestants, than whom no sect has cried out more 
loudly against persecution when Protestants were the 
martyrs ; they were sanctioned by a nation who -owed 
its liberties, and by monarchs who owed their throne, to 
a solemn covenant that such penal disabilities should 
never exist.* Here, may we not inquire if the English 
nation, legislature and king, have not a duty to fulfil 
toward the Irish Catholics even greater than that of 
justice, — a duty of compunction, of repentance, and 
atonement? The faith of a solemn treaty made with 
them has been broken: it is not enough that it has been 
in part reestablished, it ought to be religiously fulfilled. 
They have been ruled with tyranny : it is not enough 
that the tyranny should be relaxed, it should cease 
altogether. They have been driven from the pale of the 
constitution : it is not enough that they should be allowed 
to pass its barriers, they should range free and uncon- 
trolled through all its rights. 

lhat this system of slow political torture was not 
warranted by any alleged delinquency on their part, is 

* See the articles of the Treaty of Limerick. 



In the Reign of George III. 525 

notorious; for it was devised and perfected in times of 
profound tranquillity. That they were not deserving- 
even of the suspicion of being disloyal subjects, is proved 
by their signal forbearance, which has preserved the 
empire from the calamitous consequences of such flagi- 
tious misgovernment ; and that, on the contrary, they 
fully merited the confidence and protection of the 
legislature, no fair and candid mind can deny, when it 
gives to their conduct, in strictly adhering to the 
stipulations of the Treaty of Limerick, and to their 
allegiance to the house of Brunswick, the just value to 
which it is entitled. 

Having now reached the utmost point to which the 
penal statutes extended, which seems to be as far as 
human invention, quickened by mixed feelings of alarm, 
of bigotry, and of pride, could go, we should not be 
excusable on general grounds if we neglect to record 
their effects. 

But there is even a nearer interest in this examination. 
At a period when the state of Ireland so much occupies 
the attention of the legislature and of the public ; when 
it is admitted on all sides that the prosperity and 
security of England herself must rise or fall with the 
prosperity and security of Ireland, and when the events 
of each succeeding day prove the absolute necessity of 
some measures to ameliorate her condition, and show that 
things cannot go on as they are, without the inevitable 
destruction of the British empire, it will be of great 
importance to be able to form an accurate opinion upon 
the effects which were the result of the penal statutes. 

It appears from unquestionable authority that, during 
the interval that elapsed between the surrender of Lim- 
erick and the total infraction of the treaty of 1704, by 
the " act to prevent the further growth of Popery," the 
toleration which the Catholics experienced by virtue of 
that treaty, produced its natural consequences. The 



526 Penal Lazvs 

security they enjoyed restored industry, and plentv of 
all things; useful arts were introduced: the land was 
cultivated, and a fine island, reduced to a desert by the 
late war, soon assumed a new face. In fact Ireland was 
never happier than during this interval of religious tolera- 
tion.* Of the effects of the penal laws, in entirely revers- 
ing the order of things, Lord Taffe, in his valuable tract 
on Irish affairs, gives the following description : " Those 
penalties and interdicts (by the laws of Anne) had their 
natural effects in the dispeopling greatly the three fine 
provinces wherein the bulk of Catholics reside. They 
took their effect in putting a stop to the cultivation began 
in King William's reign. No sooner were the Catholics 
excluded from durable and profitable tenures, than they 7 
commenced graziers, and laid aside agriculture ; they 
ceased from draining and enclosing their farms and build- 
ing good houses, as occupations unsuited to the new part 
assigned them in our national economy. They fell to 
wasting the lands they were virtually forbid to cultivate, 
the business of pasturage being compatible with such a 
conduct, and requiring, also, little industry and less labor 
in the management." 

In the year 1723 the wretchedness of the people of 
Ireland was so great, that the Duke of Grafton, in a 
speech from the throne, recommended parliament to 
take measures for relieving them. The distress, how- 
ever, continued; and in a petition presented to the House 
of Commons, in the same year, by the woollen manu- 
facturers, they say that " the woollen manufacture of 
this kingdom, which is confined to our own consumption, 
has of late been so considerably lessened that several 
thousand families have been forced to beg alms and char- 
ity of good Christians, and that a collection had lately 
been made throughout the whole city to relieve them."j* 

* " Observations on the affairs of Ireland/' by Lord Taffe, p. 4. 
t " Com. Jour.," vol. iii, p. 24. 



In the Reign of George III. 527 

Primate Boulter, in a letter of the 25th of March, 1732, 
to the Duke of Newcastle, bears testimony to this 
wretched state of Ireland. He says : " Since I came here 
in the year 1725, there was almost a famine amongst the 
poor; last year the dearness of corn was such, that thou- 
sands of families quitted their habitations to seek bread 
elsewhere, and many hundreds perished."* 

Again, on the 23d of November, 1728, he says, in 
writing to the duke : " I am sorry I am obliged to give 
vour grace so melancholy an account of the state of the 
kingdom as I shall in this letter." 

But one of the most pernicious effects of these penal 
laws was the emigration of the principal Catholic fami- 
lies to the continent. They carried with them what 
would otherwise have been the materials of the civili- 
zation, tranquillity and prosperity of their own country ; 
they left the mass of the Catholic population without 
the influence of men of education and property to direct 
and control their conduct ; and in the place of serving 
their own native land, they filled, with the highest credit 
to themselves, the situation of statesmen and generals 
in those nations which were hostile to the interests of 
Great Britain. 

Of the visible effect these laws had produced in their 
avowed objects of propagating the Protestant religion, 
and promoting the national prosperity, it is impossible to 
give a more able or a more accurate description than 
the folio w r ing, by Mr. Arthur Young, who was in Ire- 
land at the period we now treat of: + 

" While property lay exposed to the practices of power, 
the great body of the people, who had been stripped of 
their all, were more enraged than converted ; they 
adhered to the persuasion of their forefathers, with the 
steadiest and most determined zeal, while the priests, 
actuated by the spirit of a thousand inducements, made 

* Letters, p. 226. t 1778. 



528 Penal Laws 

proselytes among the common Protestants, in defiance of 
every danger. And the great, glaring fact yet remains, 
and is even admitted by the warmest advocates for the 
laws of discovery, that the established religion has not 
gained upon the Catholic in point of numbers ; on the 
contrary, that the latter has been rather on the increase. 
Public lists have been returned from the several dio- 
ceses which confirm this fact, and the intelligence I re- 
ceived on my journey spoke the same language. 

" As it is the great body of the common people that 
form the strength of a country when willing subjects, 
and its weakness when ill-affected, this fact is a decision 
of the question: after seventy years' undisturbed oper- 
ation, the system adopted in Queen Anne's reign has 
failed in this great aim, and meets at this day with a more 
numerous and equally determined body of Catholics 
than it had to oppose when first promulgated. Has not 
the experience of every age and every nation proved 
that the effect is invariable and universal? 

" Let a religion be what it may, and under whatever 
circumstances, no system of persecution ever yet had 
any other effect than to confirm its professors in their 
tenets, and spread their doctrines, instead of restraining 
them. The great plea of the Roman Catholic priests, 
and their merit with their congregations, are the dan- 
gers they hazard and the persecutions they suffer for the 
sake of their faith, — arguments that have and ever will 
have weight, while human nature continues formed of 
its present materials. 

" But if these exertions of a succession of ignorant legis- 
lators have failed continually in propagating the religion 
of government, much more have they failed in the great 
object of natural prosperity. The only considerable 
manufacture in Ireland, which carries in all parts the 
appearance of industry, is the linen ; and it ought never 
to be forgotten that this is solely confined to the Protes- 



In the Reign of George III. 529 

tant parts of the kingdom. The poor Catholics in the 
south of Ireland spin wool generally, but the purchase 
of their labor, and the whole worsted trade, is in the 
hands of the Quakers of Clonmel, Carrick, Bandon, etc. 
The fact is, the professors of that religion are under 
such discouragements that they cannot engage in any 
trade which requires both industry and capital. If they 
succeed and make a fortune, what are they to do with 
it ? They can neither buy land, nor take a mortgage, nor 
even fine down the rent of a lease. Where is there a 
people in the world to be found industrious under such 
circumstances ? 

" It is no superficial view I have taken of this matter 
in Ireland; and being at Dublin at the time a very 
trifling part of these laws was agitated in parliament, I 
attended the debate, with my mind open to conviction, 
and an auditor for the mere purpose of information. I 
have conversed on the subject with most distinguished 
characters of the kingdom, and I cannot, after all, but de- 
clare that the scope, purport, and aim of the laws of dis- 
covery, as executed, are not against the Catholic religion, 
which increases under them, but against the industry and 
property of whosoever professes that religion. 

" In vain has it been said that consequence and power 
follow poverty, and that the attack is made in order to 
wound the doctrine through its property. If such was 
the intention, 1 reply, that seventy years' experience 
proves the folly and futility of it. Those laws have 
crushed all the. industry and wrested most of the prop- 
erty from the Catholics, but the religion triumphs: it 
is thought to increase. Those who have handed about 
calculations to prove a decrease, admit, on the face of 
them, that it will require four thousand years to make 
converts of the whole, supposing the work to go on 
in future as it has in the past time. But the whole pre- 
tence is an affront to common-sense, for it implies that 



530 Penal Laws 

you will lessen a religion by persecuting- it. All history 
and experience condemn such a proposition. 

" The system pursued in Ireland has had no other 
tendency but that of driving out of the kingdom all the 
personal wealth of the Catholics, and prohibiting their 
industry within it. The face of the country, — every object, 
in short, which presents itself to the eye of a traveller, 
tells him how effectually this has been done. I urge it, 
not as an argument — the whole kingdom speaks it as a fact. 
We have seen that this conduct has not converted the 
people to the religion of government, and instead of 
adding to the internal security, it has endangered it. 
If, therefore, it does not add to the national prosperity, 
for what purpose but that of private tyranny could it 
have been embraced and persisted in ? Mistaken ideas of 
private interest account for the actions of individuals ; 
but what could have influenced the British government 
to permit a system which must inevitably prevent the 
island from even becoming of the importance which nature 
intended ?'" * 

Of the state of the agriculture of Ireland at this period 
a tolerably accurate idea may be formed from the words 
of the same author : " I have reason to believe that five 
pounds sterling per English acre, expended all over 
Ireland, which amounts to ,£88,341,136, would not more 
than build, fence, plant, drain and improve that country, 
to be upon a par, in those respects, with England." f 

The prices also of the produce of land afford proof 
of the general poverty of the kingdom. In 1778 'butter 
sold for 5|d. per lb., mutton 2|d., beef 2jd., pork 2jd., 
veal 3jd., a fat turkey for iofd., a goose for 8Jd., and 
a chicken for 2jd.f 

From these several authorities upon the state of Ireland 
in 1778, much information may be collected concerning 

* "Young's Tour," vol. ii, p. 135. English Ed. 

t lb., App. \ lb., 



In the Reign of George III. 531 

the causes of many of those peculiar circumstances which, 
at this day, belong to that country. If it be asked why 
the people of Ireland are so illiterate, the answer that 
presents itself is : Look to the penal laws that deprived 
them, till a late period, of education. If it be asked why 
they are poor, the same answer must be given : Look to 
the penal laws. If it be asked why the lower orders eat 
vegetables only, and live in hovels, still the same answer : J 
Look to the penal laws. If it be asked why there is no 
class of yeomanry in Ireland like that in England, the 
answer is : Because the penal laws prohibited industry, 
and prevented the small land-owner from acquiring 
either property or consequence in the one country, as he 
might do in the other. If it be asked why the people 
are discontented, and dislike England, this answer alone 
can be given : Because from England they received 
this penal code, under which they have endured, for 
above a century, every species of calamity, contrary to 
the positive stipulations of a sacred and solemn treaty. 

It was in the year 1774 that the Irish legislature passed 
the first act toward conciliating the Catholics: "An act 
to enable his majesty's subjects, of whatever persuasion, 
to testify their allegiance to him,"* which is as follows : — 

" Whereas many of his majesty's subjects in this king- 
dom are desirous to testify their loyalty and allegiance 
to his majesty, and their abhorrence of certain doctrines 
imputed to them, and to remove jealousies which hereby 
have for a length of time subsisted between them and 
others of his majesty's loyal subjects ; but upon account of 
their religious tenets are, by the laws now in being, pre- 
vented from giving public assurances of such allegiance, 
and of their real principles, and good-will and affection 
toward their fellow-subjects : in order, therefore, to give 
such persons an opportunity of testifying their allegiance 
to his majesty, and good-will toward the present constitu- 

*I3 and 14 George III, c. 35. 



532 Penal Laws 

tion of this kingdom, and to promote peace and industry 
amongst the inhabitants thereof, be it enacted by the 
king's most excellent majesty, by and with the advice 
and consent of the lords spiritual and temporal and 
commons, in this present parliament assembled, and by 
the authority of the same, that, from and after the 
first da}^ of June, 1774, it shall and may be lawful for 
any person professing the Popish religion to go before 
the judges of his majesty's Court of King's Bench, any 
justice of the peace for the county in which he does or 
shall reside, or before any magistrate of any city or town 
corporate wherein he does or shall reside, and there take 
and subscribe the oath of allegiance and declaration here- 
inafter mentioned, which oath and declaration such judges 
of the King's Bench, justices of the peace and magistrates, 
are hereby enabled and required to administer: — 

" ' I, A. B., do take Almighty God and His only Son, 
Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, to witness that I will be 
faithful and bear true allegiance to our most gracious 
sovereign lord, King George III, and him will defend 
to the utmost of my power against all conspiracies and 
attempts whatever, that shall be made against his 
person, crown and dignity ; and I will do my utmost 
endeavor to disclose and make known to his majesty and 
his heirs all treasons and traitorous conspiracies which 
may be formed against him or them ; and I do faithfully 
promise to maintain, support, and defend, to the utmost 
of my power, the succession of the crown in his majesty's 
family against any person or persons whatsoever, here- 
by utterly renouncing and abjuring any obedience or 
allegiance unto the person taking upon himself the style 
and title of Prince of Wales, in the lifetime of his father, 
and who, since his death, is said to have assumed the 
style and title of King of Great Britain and Ireland by 
the name of Charles III, and to any other person claiming 
01 pretending a right to the crown of these realms ; and 



In the Reign of George III. 533 

I do swear that I do reject and detest as unchristian 
and impious to believe that it is lawful to murder or de- 
stroy any person or persons whatsoever, for or under 
pretence of their being heretics, and also that unchris- 
tian and impious principle, that no faith is to be kept with 
heretics. I further declare that it is no article of my 
faith, and that I do renounce, reject, and abjure, the 
opinion that princes excommunicated by the pope and 
council, or by any authority of the See of Rome, or by 
any authority whatsoever, may be deposed and murdered 
by their subjects, or by any person whatsoever ; and I 
do promise that I will not hold, maintain, or abet any 
such opinion, or any other opinion contrary to what is 
expressed in this declaration ; and I do declare that I do 
not believe that the Pope of Rome, or any other foreign 
prince, prelate, state, or potentate, hath or ought to have 
any temporal or civil jurisdiction, power, superiority, or 
preeminence, directly or indirectly, within this realm; 
and I do solemnly, in the presence of God, and His only 
Son, Jesus Christ, my Redeemer, profess, testify, and 
declare that I do make this declaration, and every part 
thereof, in the plain and ordinary sense of the words of 
this oath, without any evasion, equivocation, or mental 
reservation whatsoever, and without any dispensation 
already granted by the pope, or any authority of the 
See of Rome, or any person whatever, and without 
thinking that I am or can be acquitted before God or 
man, or absolved of this declaration, or any part thereof, 
although the pope, or any other person or persons, 
or authority whatsoever, shall dispense with or annul 
the same, or declare that it was null and void from the 
beginning. So help me God.' 

" And be it enacted by the authority aforesaid, that the 
officers of the Court of King's Bench, justices of peace, 
and magistrates of the cities and towns corporate, shall 
yearly, within twenty-one days after the istof December, 



534 Penal Laws 

return to the clerk of the Privy Council of this kingdom, 
or his deputy, a true and perfect list, under his or their 
hand, of every such Papist as shall, in the course of the 
preceding year, have taken and subscribed such oath, in 
which list the quality, condition, title, and place of such 
Papist shall be specified." 

About the same time, fearing that their grievances were 
not known to his majesty, the Catholics prepared a 
petition, which was presented to Lord Buckinghamshire 
by Lord Fingal, Mr. Preston, and Mr. Dermot, in order 
that it might be transmitted by him to the king : — 

" To the King's Most Excellent Majesty, the 
humble address and petition of the roman 
Catholics of Ireland : 
" Most Gracious Sovereign : — 

We, your majesty's most dutiful subjects, the Roman 
Catholics of your kingdom of Ireland, with hearts full 
of loyalty, but overwhelmed with affliction, and de- 
pressed by our calamitous and ruined circumstances, beg 
leave to lay at your majesty's feet some small part of 
those numerous and insupportable grievances under 
which we have long groaned, not only without any act 
of disobedience, but even without murmur or complaint, 
in hopes that our inviolable submission and unaltered 
patience under those severe pressures would fully con- 
fute the accusation of seditious principles, with which we 
have been unfortunately and unjustly charged. 

" We are deeply sensible of your majesty's clemency in 
moderating the rigorous execution of some of the laws 
against us, but we humbly beg leave to represent that 
several, and those the most severe and distressing of 
those laws, execute themselves with the most fatal 
certainty, and that your majesty's clemency cannot, in 
the smallest degree, interpose for their mitigation ; other- 
wise your Roman Catholic subjects would most cheer- 



In the Reign of George III. 535 

fully acquiesce in that resource, and rest with an absolute 
and unbounded assurance on your majesty's princely 
generosity, and your pious regard to the rights of private 
conscience. 

" We are, may it please your majesty, a numerous and 
very industrious part of your majesty's subjects ; and yet 
by no industry, by no honest endeavors on our part, is it 
in our power to acquire or to hold almost any secure or 
permanent property whatsoever. We are not only dis- 
qualified to purchase, but are disabled from occupying any 
land, even in farm, except on a tenure extremely scanted 
both in profit and in time; and if we should venture to 
expend anything on the melioration of land thus held, by 
building, by enclosure, by draining, or by any other species 
of improvement so very necessary in this country, so far 
would our services be from bettering our fortunes, that 
these are precisely the very circumstances which, as the 
law stands, must necessarily disqualify us from continuing 
those farms for any time in our possession. 

" Whilst the endeavors of our industry are thus dis- 
couraged, — no less, we humbly apprehend, to the detri- 
ment of the national prosperity, and the diminution of your 
majesty's revenue, and to our particular ruin, — there are 
a set of men who, instead of exercising any honest 
occupation in the commonwealth, make it their employ- 
ment to pry into our miserable poverty, to drag us into 
the courts, and to compel us to confess, on our oaths, 
and under the penalties of perjury, whether we have, in 
any instance, acquired a property in the smallest degree 
exceeding what the rigor of the law has admitted ; and 
in such cases the informers, without any other merit than 
that of their discovery, are invested, to the daily ruin of 
several innocent, industrious families, not only with the 
surplus in which the law is exceeded, but in the whole 
body of the estate and interest so discovered ; and it is 
our grief that this evil is likely to continue and increase, 



536 Penal Laws 

as informers have, in this country, almost worn off the 
infamy which, in all ages and in all other countries, has 
attended their character, and have grown into some 
repute by the frequency and success of their practices. 

"And this, most gracious sovereign, though extremely 
-grievous, is far from being the only or most oppressive 
particular in which our distress is connected with the 
breach of the rules of honor and morality. By the 
laws now in force in this kingdom, a son, however un- 
dutiful or profligate, shall, merely by the merit of con- 
forming to the established religion, not only deprive the 
Roman Catholic father of that free and full possession of 
his estate, that power to mortgage or otherwise dis- 
pose of it which the exigencies of his affairs may require, 
but shall himself have full iiberty immediately to mort- 
gage or otherwise alienate the reversion of that estate 
from his family forever : a regulation by which a father, 
contrary to the order of nature, is put under the power 
of his son, and through which an early dissoluteness is 
not only suffered, but encouraged, by giving a pernicious 
privilege, the frequent use of which has broken the hearts 
of many deserving parents, and entailed poverty and de- 
spair on some of the most ancient and opulent families in 
this kingdom. 

" Even when the parent has the good fortune to escape 
this calamity in his lifetime, y et he has, at his death, the 
melancholy and almost certain prospect of leaving neither 
peace nor fortune to his children ; for, by that law, which 
bestows the whole fortune on the first conformist, Or, 
on non-conformity, disperses it among the children, in- 
curable jealousies and animosities have arisen, a total 
extinction of principle and of a natural benevolence has 
ensued, w T hilst Ave are obliged to consider our own off- 
spring and the brothers of our own blood as our most 
dangerous enemies ; the blessing of Providence on our 
families, in a numerous issue, is converted into the most 



In the Reign of George III. 537 

certain means of their ruin and depravation ; we are, 
most gracious sovereign, permitted neither to enjoy the 
few broken remains of our patrimonial inheritance, nor 
by our industry to acquire any secure establishment to 
our families. 

" In this deplorable situation let it not be considered, 
we earnestly beseech your majesty, as an instance -of 
presumption or discontent, that we thus adventure to lay 
open to your majesty's mercy a very small part of our 
uncommon sufferings: what we have concealed under a 
respectful silence would form a far longer and full as 
melancholy a recital. We speak with reluctance, though 
we feel with anguish ; we respect from the bottom of our 
hearts that legislation under which we suffer, but we 
humbly conceive it is impossible to procure redress with- 
out complaint, or to make a complaint that by some 
construction may not appear to convey blame. And noth- 
ing, we assure your majesty, should have extorted from us 
even these complaints but the strong necessity we find 
ourselves under, of employing every lawful, humble en- 
deavor, lest the whole purpose of our lives and labors 
should prove only the means of confirming to ourselves, 
and entailing on our posterity, inevitable beggary and the 
most abject servitude, — a servitude the more intolerable 
as it is suffered amidst that liberty, that peace, and that 
security, which, under your majesty's benign influence, 
is spread all around us, and which we alone, of all vour 
majesty's subjects, are rendered incapable of partaking. 

" In all humility we implore that our principles may 
not be estimated by the inflamed charge of controversial 
writers, nor our practices measured by the events "of 
those troubled periods when parties have run high 
(though these have been often misrepresented, and always 
cruelly exaggerated to our prejudice), but that we may 
be judged by our own actions, and in our own times. 
And we humbly offer it to your most equitable and 



538 Penal Laws 

princely consideration, that we do not rest the proof of 
our sincerity on words, but on things : on our dutiful, 
peaceable, submissive behavior for more than fourscore 
years ; and though it will be considered as too severe to 
form any opinion of great bodies by the practice of 
indiviuals, yet if, in all that time, amongst all our people, 
in the daily increase of severe laws against us, one treasonable 
insurrection, or one treasonable conspiracy can be proved, if, 
amongst our clergy, one seditious sermon can be shown to have 
been preached, we will readily admit that there is good 
reason for continuing the present laws in all their force 
against us. But if, on the contrary (we speak in full 
confidence), it can be shown that our clergy have ever 
exerted their utmost endeavors to enforce submission tQ' 
your majesty's government, and obedience to your laws ; 
if it can be shown that these endeavors have always 
been most strenuous in times of public danger, or when 
any accident tended to create a ferment amongst the 
people ; if our laity have frequently offered (what we are 
always ready to fulfil) to hazard their lives and fortunes 
for your majesty's service ; if we have willingly bound 
up the fruits of our discouraged industry with the for- 
tunes of your majesty's government in the public loans, 
then we humbly hope we may be admitted to a small 
portion of mercy, and that that behavior, which your 
majesty's benignity and condescension will esteem a merit 
in our circumstances, may entitle us, not to reward, but 
to such toleration as may enable us to become useful 
citizens to our country, and subjects as profitable as we 
are loyal to your majesty. 

" Permit us, most gracious sovereign, on this occasion, 
to reiterate the assurances of our unshaken loyalty, 
which all our sufferings have not been able to abate ; of 
our sincere zeal for your majest} 7 's service, of our 
attachment to the constitution of our country, and of our 
warmest gratitude for your majesty's continual indul- 



In the Reign of George III. 539 

gence, and for the late instance of favor we have experi- 
enced from parliament, in enabling us, consistent with 
our religious tenets, to give a legal proof of our sentiments 
upon these points. And we humbly hope that the 
alacrity and eagerness with which we have seized this 
first, though long-wished-for opportunity of testifying in 
the most solemn and public manner our inviolable 
fidelity to your majesty, our real principles, and our good- 
will and affection toward our fellow-subjects, will 
extinguish all jealousies, and remove those imputations 
which alone have hitherto held us forth in the light of 
enemies to your majesty and to the state. And if any- 
thing further can be suggested or devised, whereby we 
can, by our actions, more fully evince our sincerity, we 
shall consider such an opportunity of demonstrating 
our real loyalty as a high favor, and shall be deficient 
in no act whatever which does not amount to a renun- 
ciation of that religious profession which we value more 
than our lives, and which it cannot be suspected we hold 
from obstinacy or a contempt of the laws, since it has 
been taken up by ourselves, but has, from time imme- 
morial, been handed down to us from our ancestors. 

" We derive no small consolation, most gracious sover- 
eign, from considering that the most severe and rigor- 
ous of the laws against us had been enacted before the 
accession of your majesty's most illustrious house to 
the throne of these kingdoms ; we, therefore, indulge the 
more sanguine hopes that the mitigation of them, and 
the establishment of peace, industry, and universal hap- 
piness amongst all your loyal subjects, may be one of 
the blessings of your majesty's reign. 

" And though we might plead in favor of such relaxa- 
tion, the express words of a solemn treaty, entered into 
with us by your majesty's royal predecessor, King Wil- 
liam (which has been forfeited by no disobedience on our 
part), yet we neither wish nor desire to receive anything 



$40 Penal Laws 

but as a mere act of your majest} r 's clemency, and of the 
indulgence and equity of your parliament. 

"That this act of truly loyal beneficence and justice may 
be added to the other instances of your majesty's august 
virtues, and that the deliverance of a faithful and dis- 
tressed people may be one of those distinguishing acts of 
your reign, which shall transmit its memory to the love, 
gratitude and veneration of your latest posterity, is the 
humble prayer of," * etc., etc. 

In the year \yj%,\ an act was passed " for the relief of 
his majesty's subjects of this kingdom professing the 
Popish religion," the preamble of which contains a con- 
firmation of everything that has been already advanced 
concerning the loyalty of the Catholics, and a declara- 
tion on the part of the king and parliament respecting 
the policy of admitting the Catholics into a full partici- 
pation of the blessings of the constitution, which is a 
complete recognition of their right to enjoy them. It 
states: " And whereas, from their uniform peaceable 
behavior for a long series of years, it appears reasonable 
and expedient to relax the same [the laws of Anne], and 
it must tend not only to the cultivation and improvement 
of this kingdom, but to the prosperity and strength of all 
his majesty's dominions, that his subjects of all denomina- 
tions should enjoy the blessings of a free constitution, 
and should be bound to each other by mutual interest 
and mutual affection," etc. 

By this act, Papists, provided they take the oath and 
declaration of 13 and 14 George III, c. 35, are admitted 
to the following privileges : — 

They may take land on leases not exceeding nine hun- 
dred and ninety-nine years, or determinable upon any 
number of lives not exceeding five. 

* This petition is from the pen of Mr. Burke, 
t 17 and 18 George III, c. 49. 



In the Reign of George III 541 

The lands of Papists are to be descendible, devisable, 
and transferable, as fully as if the same were in the 
seizure of any other of his majesty's subjects. 

Papists are rendered capable to hold and enjoy all 
estates which may descend, be devised or transferred to 
them. 

No maintenance is to be hereafter granted to a con- 
forming child of a Papist out of the personal property 
of such Papist, except out of such leases as may be 
taken under this act. 

And the conformity of the eldest son is not to alter, 
hereafter, the Popish parent's estate. 

In the year 1782 another act was passed "for the 
further relief of his majesty's subjects of this kingdom 
professing the Popish religion."* 

The preamble of this act : " Whereas all such of his 
majesty's subjects in this kingdom, of whatever per- 
suasion, as have heretofore taken and subscribed, or shall 
hereafter take and subscribe, the oath of allegiance and 
declaration prescribed by an act passed in the thirteenth 
and fourteenth years of his present majesty's reign, entitled 
' An act to enable his majesty's subjects, of whatever per- 
suasion, to testify their allegiance to him,' ought to be 
considered as good and loyal subjects to his majesty, 
his crown and government: and whereas a continuance 
of several of the laws formerly enacted, and still in force 
in this kingdom, against persons professing the Popish 
religion, is therefore unnecessary in respect to those 
who have taken or shall take the said oath, and is in- 
jurious to the real wealth and prosperity of Ireland, 
therefore," etc. 

By this act, Catholics, provided they take this oath, 
may purchase or take lands, or any interest therein, ex- 
cept advowsons or boroughs, returning.members of parlia- 
ment, and dispose of the same by will or otherwise ; and 

* 21 and 22 George III, c. 24. 



54 2 Penal Laws 

Popish ecclesiastics, on the same condition, and regis- 
tering their names and abode with the register of the 
diocese, are discharged from all penalties. ' 

This act repeals so much of 8 Anne as subjects a 
Papist to fine and imprisonment on his refusal to testify 
on oath, before two justices of the peace, when and where 
he heard the Popish Mass celebrated, and the name of the 
person celebrating it ; and so much of 7 William III, c. 
5, as subjects any Papist, who shall have in his possession 
any horse of the value of £$ or more, to the penalties 
therein mentioned ; and so much of 8 Anne as enables 
the lord-lieutenant to seize any horse belonging to a 
Papist, upon a prospect of invasion or rebellion. It also, 
repeals so much of 9 George II, c. 6, as enables grand 
juries to reimburse such persons as have been robbed by 
privateers in time of war for their losses, and to levy 
the same on the goods of Papists only ; and so much of 
6 George I, c. 10, as subjects Papists who shall not 
provide a Protestant watchman to watch in their turn, to 
certain penalties ; and so much of 2 Anne, c. 6, as sub- 
jects Papists who took any house, or came to dwell in 
Limerick after the year 1703, or within the town of 
Galway, to certain penalties. 

In the same year was likewise passed an act to allow 
persons professing the Popish religion to teach school 
in this kingdom, and for regulating the education of 
Papists, and also to repeal parts of certain laws relative 
to the guardianship of their children.* 

The preamble states : " Whereas several of the laws 
made in this kingdom relative to the education of 
Papists, or persons professing the Popish religion, are 
considered as too severe, and have not answered the 
desired effect." 

This act repeals so much of 7 William III, c. 4, and 
of 8 Anne, c. 3, as subjects Catholics who shall publicly 

* 21 and 22 George III, c. 62. 



In the Reign of George III. 543 

teach school, or privately instruct youths, to the like 
penalties as any Popish regular convict, provided they 
take the oaths of 13 and 14 George III, c. 35 ; and it 
enables Catholics, except ecclesiastics, to be guardians. 

Of the numerous individuals who at this time distin- 
guished themselves for their exertions in favor of Cath- 
olics, there was no one to whom they were under greater 
obligations than to the late Mr. Burke. He wrote for 
them the petition which was presented to the king in 
1774. In the English House of Commons, in 1778, he was 
the first to declare the necessity of concessions being 
made to them. He said that " Ireland was now the 
chief dependence of the British crown, and it particu- 
larly behoved that country to admit the Irish nation 
to the privileges of British citizens;" * and in the year 
1782 he wrote his celebrated letter to Lord Kenmare, 
in which he so ably exposed the folly, injustice, and 
tyranny of the penal laws. 

It certainly is a fact of no small importance in favor of 
the wisdom of unlimited concession to the Catholics, that 
this great statesman, the advocate of existing establish- 
ments, and who was the first and most formidable 
opponent to the progress of the Jacobinical principles of 
France, should have advised it, and incessantly forwarded 
it by his powerful talents and extensive influence. 

But the Catholics were indebted, not only to the 
labors of their friends, but also to the great revolution 
which was going on at that period in America, for the 
success of the first concessions that were made to them. 
This soon appeared very evident. An attempt was made 
by Mr. James Fitzgerald, a few months before the intro- 
duction of the act of 17 and 18 George III, to obtain 
for them a power to take leases of lands for sixty-one 
years: and this attempt failed. But soon afterward, 
when the intelligence arrived of the defeat of the British 

* 8 Eng. Deb. 9, 185, 1st April, 1778. 



544 Penal Laws 

forces in America, the same parliament, on the recom- 
mendation of the government, passed an act for enabling 
them to take land on leases for nine hundred and ninety- 
nine years. 

It was not, however, till the British government w^ere 
obliged to transport the whole of the British army from 
Ireland to America, and thus leave it exposed to the in- 
vasion of France, that the Catholics became of sufficient 
importance, in the eyes either of their own Protestant 
countrymen or of the British government, to be attended 
to and caressed by them. 

The only alternative, then, left for the Protestants to 
adopt was, either to promote a union of sects in the com- t 
mon defence of the kingdom, or to make up their minds 
to fall an easy prey to the arms of France. Upon this 
principle of preservation, by an oblivion of all past ani- 
mosities, the volunteers were embodied, and composed 
indiscriminately of Catholics and Protestants. But, in 
proportion as the danger of invasion diminished, they 
naturally turned their attention to the grievances that 
both sects experienced at the hands of the British govern- 
ment, and soon became an armed association for the 
attainment of political rights. * 

In this appeal to arms, in open resistance to the power 
of Great Britain, for the purpose of compelling her to 
grant to Ireland the independence of her legislature, 
and a reform of her parliament, the Protestants took 
the lead. But the contention between them and the 
British government was not one of arms, because Great 

* " In the year 1 782, when the treasury had no supply, but was, in fact, bank- 
rupt, when a French fleet appeared off Cork, when the army was only 4,000 
men, and unprovided, it was evidently owing to the wealth of the Roman 
Catholics that the country was put into a posture of defence, and saved from 
the invasion of the enemy; whereas, had they been disposed to be disloyal 
upon that occasion,, and to have made use of that power which they actually 
possessed, they might have completely separated Ireland from the government 
of this country. '' — Speech of Lord Buckingham, June 22 ; 1808. 



In the Reign of George III. 545 

Britain had no troops with which to dispute with the 
Volunteers, but one of political manoeuvring. It was 
plain that, to whichever party the Catholics attached 
themselves, victory would belong. The government, 
therefore, in order to secure them, passed the acts of 
1778 and 1782, while the Protestants, on the other hand, 
endeavored to conciliate them by public resolutions and 
declarations in favor of their complete emancipation. 

The Dungannon Convention, which met in February, 
1782, and was composed of the representatives of one 
hundred and forty-three Protestant corps of volunteers, 
resolved, with two dissenting voices only : " That they 
held the right of private judgment, in matters of religion, 
to be equally sacred in others as themselves ; therefore, 
that, as Christians and Protestants, they were rejoiced in 
the relaxation of the penal laws against their Roman 
Catholic fellow-subjects, and that they conceived the 
measure to be fraught with the happiest consequences to 
the union and prosperity of Ireland." 

These liberal declarations on the part of this meeting, 
and the general tenor of the conduct of the Protestants 
throughout Ireland toward the Catholics, secured their 
cordial concurrence ; and the British government were 
at length reluctantly obliged to concede the favorite 
object of an independent Irish legislature. 

The Protestants now proceeded to attempt to carry 
their other great object, a parliamentary reform ; and after 
the sense of the kingdom had been expressed, at various 
public meetings, to be decidedly in favor of it, they deter- 
mined to hold a convention in Dublin for the purpose of 
impressing upon government and parliament the neces- 
sity of acceding to their demands. In the meantime a 
division of opinion had manifested itself among some 
of the Northern corps of volunteers on the Catholic 
question, and Lord Charlemont and other persons had 
declared themselves hostile to further concessions. This 



546 Penal Laws 

circumstance afforded the government an easy oppor- 
tunity of defeating the object of the convention. They 
contrived to have a motion made for connecting the 
emancipation of the Catholics with the question of par- 
liamentary reform ; and upon its being rejected by the 
convention, knowing that its power was not to be 
dreaded, if unsupported by the Catholic population, they 
despised its threats, and by a manly opposition to their 
demands, they secured their dispersion without tumult, 
and certainly without the regret of the advocates of 
such a reform in parliament as the general circumstances 
of the country absolutely required. 

From this period to the year 1790 the Catholic ques- 
tion was not once agitated, either by the Catholics or by 
parliament. In this year the attorney-general brought 
in a bill to explain and amend the act of 22 George III, 
c. 62. 

The intention of this act was to give to Catholics the 
power of appointing guardians to their children; but it 
was so carelessly drawn that, upon consulting it in the 
case of the will of the late Lord Gormanstowm, by which 
he had appointed guardians to his son, it was discovered 
that they were not competent to act. The present bill 
was therefore introduced to remedy this defect. 

A circumstance which took place this summer shows 
that this act of common justice was not in any degree 
the result of an inclination on the part of the govern- 
ment to treat the Catholics with more than customary 
liberality. Lord Westmoreland, then lord-lieutenant, 
had visited the south of Ireland, and, on his arrival at 
Cork, it was intimated to the Catholics there that an 
expression of their loyalty would be acceptable. Accord- 
ingly an address of that nature was prepared, which, 
however, concluded with a hope that their loyalty would 
entitle them to some relaxation of the penal code. 
Before its being formally presented, it was submitted to 



In the Reign of George III. 547 

his excellency, and was returned to them to strike out 
the clause which expressed hope. With a feeling rather 
natural to men not perfectly broken down by oppression, 
they refused to strike it out, and declined presenting the 
address. 

A century of pains and penalties had now elapsed, in 
which period the most severe and minute investigation 
had not been able to ascribe to the Catholics one instance 
of disloyalty, when they at length determined to make 
a vigorous exertion to obtain a restoration of their con- 
stitutional rights. In the course of the year 1790, violent 
resolutions had been entered into by the magistrates of 
the county of Armagh against them. Those of Dublin, 
and of the other principal cities and towns of Ireland, 
were, in consequence, roused to adopt resolutions on their 
part, expressive of the necessity of petitioning parlia- 
ment. These had been transmitted to the general com- 
mittee of Catholics, who, thereupon, held a meeting to 
consider them, on the nth February, 1791. The general 
committee referred these resolutions to a sub-committee, 
who made upon them the following report: — 

"Your committee having, in obedience to your direc- 
tions, carefully perused the resolutions of the Catholics 
of Ireland, report that said resolutions contain the most 
unequivocal sentiments of loyalty to our most gracious 
sovereign, George III, of love for our country, and 
obedience to its laws, and the most humble hope of 
being restored to some participation of its excellent 
constitution. 

" That your Catholic brethren refer, with confidence, 
to the numberless proofs they have given of fidelity, in 
times most perilous, when rebellion raged in the bosom 
of Britain, and when foreign invasion threatened our 
coast, and to that alacrity with which all descriptions of 
our people took the oath of allegiance ; and they rely on 
the fact that their scrupulous observance of such . c ,acred 



548 Penal Laws 

obligation will nowhere be doubted, when it is considered 
that, if they took those oaths required by law, they would 
thereby become entitled to all the rights of citizens. 

" That with all humility they confide in the justice, 
liberality and wisdom of parliament, and the benignity 
of our most gracious sovereign, to relieve them from their 
degraded situation, and no longer to suffer them to con- 
tinue like strangers in their native land, but thus have 
the glory of showing all Europe that, in the plenitude 
of power, strength, and riches of the British empire, 
when nothing they grant can be imputed to any motives 
but those of justice and toleration, — that at such a period 
they deign to hear and relieve the oppressed and faith- 
ful subjects, and to unite them forever to their country 
by every tie of gratitude and interest ; and that they 
will show all Europe that humble and peaceful conduct 
and dutiful application are the only true and effectual 
methods for good subjects to obtain relief from a wise 
and good government. 

" That our Catholic brethren, therefore, desire that 
application may be made for such relief as the wisdom 
and justice of parliament may grant ; and they hope to 
be restored at least to some of the rights and privileges 
which have been wisely granted to others who dissent 
from the Established Church, that they may be thus 
enabled to promote, in conjunction with the rest of their 
fellow-subjects, the present and future happiness and 
strength of their country. 

" That our said Catholic brethren direct that such 
application be immediately made and continued in the 
most submissive and constitutional manner for a mitiga- 
tion of the restrictions and disqualifications under which 
they labor." 

The general committee having agreed with and 
adopted this report, a petition was prepared, in order to 
be laid before parliament in the ensuing session. 



In the Reign of George III, 549 

With this petition a deputation of the general com- 
mittee waited upon the chief secretary, Lord Hobart, to 
solicit the countenance and protection of government: 
but in vain. This was not only refused them, but the 
Catholics of Ireland, constituting, at the lowest calcula- 
tion, a very large majority of the inhabitants of the 
kingdom, had not even sufficient influence to induce any 
one member of parliament to present it. 

A second deputation having failed to obtain even an 
answer from government to a renewed application for 
its support, it was determined to send Mr. Keogh to 
London, to lay before his majesty's ministers the state of 
his Catholic subjects. 

Mr. Keogh, on his arrival in London, instituted a nego- 
tiation with Mr. Pitt and the cabinet, at the close of 
which the Catholics were given to understand that they 
might hope for four objects : grand juries, county magis- 
trates, high sheriffs, and the bar. Admission to the right 
of suffrage was also mentioned and taken under consid- 
eration. 

The spirit of religious liberty having, at this time, 
made great progress among the Protestant dissenters in 
Ulster, the first Belfast volunteer company, in July, 1791, 
passed a resolution in favor of admitting the Catholics 
to a full enjoyment of the constitution ; and in October 
the great Northern Association of United Irishmen* 
pledged themselves " to endeavor, by all due means, to 
procure a complete and radical reform of the people in 
parliament, including Irishmen of every religious per- 
suasion." 

In the meantime, whilst Mr. Keosfh was in London, the 
Irish administration had been endeavoring to counteract 
the views of the Catholic body, by a negotiation with 
the principal nobility and gentry belonging to it ; and in 

* It was not till 1794 that a new society under this name embarked in an 
»( tempi to separate Great Britain from Ireland. 



c,- Penal Laws 

some degree their exertions were successful. For, at a 
meeting of the general committee, held in December, 
1 79 1, for the purpose of considering the policy of petition- 
ing parliament in the ensuing session, some of the meet- 
ing wished to adopt a resolution of seeking no removal 
of the existing disabilities but in such a manner and to 
such an extent as the wisdom of the legislature deemed 
expedient. This was resisted by others, and on a division 
upon the question of petitioning, the nobility were left in 
a minority of ninety to seventeen. 

Pursuant to this decision, the following petition was 
drawn up, and introduced into the House of Commons 
by Mr. O'Hara, on the 28th January, 1792 : — 

" We, your petitioners, being appointed, by sundry of 
his majesty's subjects professing the Roman Catholic 
religion, to be agents for conducting applications to the 
legislature for their relief, in our own and their names 
beg leave to approach this high court of parliament 
with an unfeigned respect for its wisdom and authority, 
and at the same time with a deep and heartfelt sensation 
of our singular and deplorable situation. And, first of 
all, we implore (and for this we throw ourselves on the 
indulgence of parliament) that no irregularit}^ or defect 
in form of language should obstruct the success of these 
our most ardent supplications. The circumstances in 
which we stand deserve consideration. For near a hun- 
dred years we, and our fathers and our grandfathers, have 
groaned under a code of laws (in some parts already 
purged from the statutes), the like of which no age, 
no nation, no climate, ever saw. Yet sore, as it were, 
from the scourge of active persecution, scarce yet con- 
firmed in our minds, and but lately secure in our persons 
and in our houses from the daily alarms of search-war- 
rants and informers, we come before parliament for the 
first time, and we come to ask alleviation of burdens under 
which we can find consolation only in the melancholy 



In the Reign of George III, 551 

comparison of former times. In this state of recent 
apprehension and troubled, anxious hope, with minds un- 
adapted to the precise observances of decorum, we rest 
upon the simple merits of our case. It is a part of our 
calamities that we do not know how to tell them with 
propriety ; and if our complaints should deviate into 
remonstrance, and we should seem to upbraid when we 
mean to supplicate, we trust a due allowance will be 
made for expressions extorted by oar anguish, or pro- 
ceeding from an inevitable ignorance of form. Excluded 
from the constitution in all its parts, and, in many 
respects, aliens to the law, how should we have learned 
the forms of parliament? 

"The hardships we suffer proceed from the law ; it is, 
therefore, only to the fountain of the law that we can look 
for relief. You are the great council of our sovereign lord 
the king ; but you are also subjects like ourselves. The 
bar of majesty, by the law of the land and by the benignity 
of that sovereign whom it is your glory to imitate, is 
ever open to the petitions of his people. As far as we are 
able to discern the great outlines of a constitution which 
we know only in speculation, we conceive that it is the 
boast of the constitution of these kingdoms to have asso- 
ciated a portion of the people into the sovereign power, in 
order that, not dazzled by the awe of supreme majesty, 
the subject may find a happy mediatorial institution, an 
asylum wherein to deposit the burden of his grief, to ex- 
pose the nakedness of his oppressions, and indulge com- 
plaint even to exaggeration. There were, indeed, those 
who would have made us believe that parliament was only 
to be approached with circumspect and timid steps, at 
most, in general terms ; and that, wrapped in proud and 
inexorable state, you would consider a specification of 
the wants of the people as an insult, and a reason for not 
supplying them. But we knew it could not be ; we knew 
that no senate, no king, no tyrant, had ever professed to 



552 Penal Laws 

turn his ear from detailed supplication. The majesty of 
God Himself is willing to receive and demands the in- 
cense of particular prayer : and shall we, who speak 
from man to man, from subject to subject, not dare to 
specify the measure and extent of our crying necessities? 

" Despising that base and hypocritical affectation, we 
are sure it is far more congenial to the nature and to 
the temper of parliament, with a firm and generous con- 
fidence to say, as we say : Here is the evil, there is the 
remedy ; to you we look for relief. 

" Behold us, then, before you, three millions of the 
people of Ireland, subjects of the same king, inhabitants 
of the same land, bound together by the same social con- 
tract, contributing to the same revenues, defended \>y the 
same armies, declared by the authentic words of an act of 
parliament to be good and loyal subjects to his majesty, 
his crown and government, and yet doomed to one 
general, unqualified incapacity, and universal exclusion, 
and universal civil proscription. We are excluded from 
the state ; we are excluded from the revenues ; we are 
excluded from every distinction, even' privilege, every 
office, every emolument, every civil trust, every cor- 
porate right ; we are excluded from the navy, from the 
army, from the magistrature, from the professions ; we 
are excluded from the palladium of life, liberty, and 
property : the juries and inquests of our country. From 
what are we not excluded ? We are excluded from the 
constitution ; we stand a strange anomaly in the law ; 
not acknowledged, not disavowed, not slaves, not free- 
men ; an exception to the principles of jurisprudence; a 
prodigy in the system of civil institution. We incur 
no small part of the penalties of a general outlawry 
and a general excommunication. Disability meets us 
at every hour, and in every walk of life. It cramps 
our industry, it shackles our property, it depresses our 
genius, it debilitates our minds. Why are we disfran- 



hi the Reign of George III 553 

chised, and why are we degraded? Or rather, why 
do these evils afflict our country, of which we are no 
inconsiderable part ? 

" We most humbly and earnestly supplicate and implore 
parliament to call this law of universal exclusion to a 
severe account, and now, at last, to demand of it upon 
what principle it stands of equity, of morality, of justice, 
or of policy ; and while we request this scrutiny into 
the law, we demand, also, the severest scrutiny into our 
principles, our actions, our words, and our thoughts. 
Wherein have we failed as lo} T al and affectionate subjects 
to the best of sovereigns ; or as sober, peaceable, and 
useful members of society? Where is that people who 
can offer the testimony of a hundred years' patient sub- 
mission to a code of laws of which no man living is now 
an advocate, without sedition, without murmur, without 
complaint? Our loyalty has undergone a century of 
severe persecution for the sake of our religion, and we 
have come out of the ordeal with our religion and with 
our loyalty. 

" Why, then, are we still left under the ban of our 
country ? We differ, it is true, from the national church 
in some points of doctrinal faith. Whether it is our 
blessing or our misfortune, He only knows to whom all 
things are known. For this, our religion, we offer no 
apology. After ages of learned and critical discussion, 
we cannot expect to throw further light upon it. We 
have only to say that it is founded on revelation, as well 
as the religion established by law. Both you and we 
are regenerated in the same baptism, and profess our 
belief in the same Christ: you, according to the Church 
of England ; we, according to the Church of Rome. We 
do not exercise an abject or obscure superstition. If we 
err, our errors have been, and still are, sanctioned by 
the examples of many flourishing, learned, and civilized 
nations. We do not enter, we disdain to enter, into the 



554 Penal Laws 

cavils of antiquated sophistry, and to insult the under- 
standing of parliament, by supposing it necessary to 
prove that a religion is not incompatible with civil 
government which has subsisted for so many hundred 
years under every possible form of government, in some 
tolerated, in some established, even to this day. 

" With regard to our civil principles, we are unalter- 
ably, deeply and zealously attached to his majesty's 
person and government. Good and loyal subjects we 
are, and we are declared by law to be. 

" With regard to the constitution of the state, we are as 
much attached to it as it is possible for men to be attached 
to a constitution by which they are not avowed. With 
regard to the constitution of the Church, we are, indeed,^ 
inviolably attached to our own: first, because we 
believe it to be true ; and next, because, beyond belief, 
we know that its principles are calculated to make us 
good men and good citizens. But, as we find it answers 
to us, individually, all the useful ends of religion, we 
solemnly and conscientiously declare that we are satisfied 
with the present condition of our ecclesiastical policy. 

" With satisfaction we acquiesce in the establishment of 
the national church; we neither repine at its possessions, 
nor envy its dignities. We are ready, upon this point, to 
give every assurance that is binding upon man. 

" With regard to every other subject, and to every 
other calumny, we have no disavowals, we have no 
declarations, to make. Conscious of the innocence of 
our lives, and the purity of our intentions, we are justi- 
fied in asking what reason of state exists (and we deny 
that any does exist) for leaving us still in the bondage 
of the law, and under the protracted restriction of penal 
statutes? 

''Penalties suppose, if not crimes, at least a cause of 
reasonable suspicion. Criminal imputations like those 
(for, to be adequate to the effect, they must be great 



In the Reign of George III. 555 

indeed) are, to a generous mind, more grievous than 
the penalties themselves. They incontrovertibly imply 
that we are considered by the legislature as standing in 
a doubtful light of fidelity or loyalty to the king or 
to the constitution of our country, and perhaps both. 
While on these unjust suppositions we are deprived of 
the common rights and privileges of British and Irish 
subjects, it is impossible for us to say we are contented, 
while we endure a relentless civil proscription, for which 
no cause is alleged, and for which no reason can be 
assigned. 

" Because we now come, with a clear, open and manly 
voice, to insist upon the grievances under which we 
still labor, it is not to be inferred that we have forgot 
the benignant justice of parliament, which has relieved 
us from the more oppressive, but not the most extensive, 
part of the penal system. In those days of affliction, 
when we lay prostrate under the iron rod, and, as it 
were, entranced in a gulf of persecution, it was necessary 
for parliament to go the whole way, and to stretch out 
a saving hand to relieve us. We had not the courage to 
look up for hope, to know our condition, or even to 
conceive a remedy. It is because the former relaxations 
were not thrown away upon us ; it is because we 
begin to feel the influence of somewhat more equal laws, 
and to revive from our former inanition, that we now 
presume to stand erect before you. Conceiving that 
parliament has a right to expect, as a test of our grati- 
tude, that we should no longer lie a dead weight upon 
our country, but come forward in our turn to assist, with 
our voice, our exertions and our councils, in a work to 
which the wisdom and power of parliament is incompe- 
tent without our cooperation : the application of a policy, 
wholly new, to the pressing wants and to the intimate 
necessities of a people long forgotten, out of the sight 
and the knowledge of a superintending legislature : — 



556 Penal Laws 

accordingly we are come ; and we claim no small merit 
that we have found our way to the door of parliament. 

"It has not been made easy for us ; every art and indus- 
try has been exerted to obstruct us. Attempts have 
been made to divide us into factions, and to throw us 
, into confusion. We have stood firm and united. We 
have received hints and cautions, obscure intimations 
and public warnings, to guard our supplications against 
intimidation. We have resisted that species of disguised 
and artful threat. We have been traduced, calumniated, 
and libelled. We have witnessed sinister endeavors 
again to blow the flame of religious animosity, and awake 
the slumbering spirit of popular terrors and popular 
fury ; but we have remained unmoved. 

"We are, indeed, accustomed to this tumid agitation 
and ferment in the public mind. In former.times it was 
the constant precursor of more intense persecution, but 
it has also attended every later and happier return of 
legislative mercy. But whether it betokens us evil or 
good, to parliament we come, to seek at that shrine a 
safeguard from impending danger, or a communication 
of new benefits. 

"What, then, do we ask of parliament? To be thor- 
oughly united and made one with the rest of our fellow- 
subjects. That, alas! would be our first, our dearest 
wish ; but if this is denied us, if sacrifices are to be made, 
if an example of rare moderation, we do not aspire to the 
condition of a fair equality, we are not at a loss to find, 
in the range of social benefits (which is nearly that of our 
present exclusions) an object which is and ought to be 
the scope and resting-place of our wishes and our hopes. 
That which we do not ask, we are not worthy to obtain. 
We knock that it may be opened unto us. We have 
learned by tradition from our ancestors, we have heard by 
fame in foreign lands, where we have been driven to seek 
education in youth and bread in manhood, and by the 



In the Reign of George III 557 

contemplation of our own mind we aie filled with a deep 
and unalterable opinion, that the Irish, formed upon the 
model of the British constitution, is a blessing of inestim- 
able value ; that it contributes, and is even essentially 
necessary for national and individual happiness. Of this 
constitution we feel ourselves worthy, and, though not 
practically, we know the benefits of its franchises. Nor 
can we, without a criminal dissimulation, conceal from 
parliament the painful inquietude which is felt by our 
whole persuasion, and the danger to which we do not 
cease to be exposed by this our total and unmerited 
exclusion from the common rights, privileges, and fran- 
chises conceded by our king for the protection of the 
subject. This exclusion is indeed the root of every evil. 
It is that which makes property insecure, and industry 
precarious; it pollutes the stream of justice; it is the 
cause of daily humiliation ; it is the insurmountable 
barrier, the impassable line of separation which divides 
the nation, and which, keeping animosity alive, prevents 
the entire and cordial intermixture of the people ; and 
therefore inevitably it is that some share, some portion, 
some participation, in the liberties and franchises of our 
country becomes the primary and essential object of our 
ardent and common solicitation. It is a blessing for 
which there is no price, and can be no compensation. With 
it every evil is tolerable ; without it no advantage is 
desirable. In this, as in all things, we submit ourselves to 
the paramount authority of parliament, and we shall ac- 
quiesce in what is given, as we do in what is taken away ; 
but this is the boon we ask : we hunger and we thirst 
for the constitution of our country. If it shall be deemed 
otherwise, and shall be determined that we are qualified, 
perhaps, for the base and lucrative tenures of professional 
occupation, but unworthy to perform the free and noble 
services of the constitution, we submit indeed, but we 
solemnly protest against the distinction for ourselves and 



Penal Laws 

our children. It is no act of ours. Whatever judgment 
may await our merits or our failings, we cannot conclude 
ourselves, by recognizing for a consideration the princi- 
ple of servility and perpetual degradation. These are the 
sentiments which we feel from the bottom of our hearts, 
and we disclose them to the free parliament of a monarch 
whose glory it is to reign over a free people ; to you we 
commit our supplications and our cause. We have indeed 
little to apprehend, in this benigner age, from the malig- 
nant aspirations of former times ; and not more from 
the obsolete calumnies of former strife, although we s,ee 
them endeavoring again to collec't the remnants of their 
exhausted venom, before they die forever, in a last and 
feeble effort to traduce our religion and our principles. 

" But, as oppression is ever fertile in pretexts, we find 
the objections started against us more dangerous because 
the} 7 are new, or new at least in the novelty of a shameless 
avowal. They are principally three : first, it is contended 
that we are a people originally and fundamentally differ- 
ent from yourselves, and that our interests are forever 
irreconcilable, because some hundred years ago our 
ancestors were conquered by yours. We deny the con- 
clusion, we deny the fact ; it is false. In addressing our- 
selves to you, we speak to the children of our ancestors, 
as we are also the children of }-our forefathers. Nature 
has triumphed over law ; we are intermixed in blood ; we 
are blended in connection ; we are one race ; we are all 
Irishmen, subjects of the imperial crown of Ireland. The 
honor of parliament is concerned to repress the audacity 
of those who tell us that you are a foreign colony, and 
consequently ought to govern according to the princi- 
ples of invaders, and the policy of recent usurpation. 
At least we confide that you will not suffer the walls of 
parliament to be contaminated with that libel upon the 
government of Ireland. The shaft which was aimed at 
us has struck yourselves,— a memorable, but, at the same 



In the Reign of George III. 559 

time, we trust, a most auspicious example to teach both 
you and us, and our common posterity, that our interests 
are one, and that whatever affects the well-being and 
honor of the Roman Catholics is also injurious to the 
Protestant interests. Of the same complexion and tend- 
ency are the two objections: one, that our advancement 
in property and privilege would lead to a repeal of the 
act of settlement ; the other, that our participation in the 
liberties and franchises of our country .would endanger 
the existence of the constitution into Which we are ad- 
mitted. 

" A resumption of the lands forfeited by our and your 
ancestors (for they are the same), after the lapse of so 
many years (near three returns of the longest period of 
legal limitation), after the dispersion and extinction of so 
many families, alter so many transitions and divisions, 
repartitions and reconsolidations of propert} r , so many 
sales, judgments, mortgages, and settlements, and after 
all the various processes of voluntary and legal operation, 
to conceive the revival of titles dormant for one hundred 
and fifty years is an idea so perfectly chimerical, so con- 
trary to the experience of all ages and all countries, so 
repugnant to the principles of jurisprudence, and so 
utterly impossible in point of fact, that the Roman 
Catholics of Ireland, once for all, make it their earnest 
request to have that question thoroughly investigated, 
in the assured hope that so idle, vain and absurd an object 
of public apprehension, being exposed and laid open to 
the eye of reason, may sleep in oblivion forever. 

"As to the other subject of apprehension, we have but 
one answer to make : we desire to partake of the constitu- 
tion, and therefore we do not desire to destroy it. Par- 
liament is now in possession of our case, our grievances, 
our sorrows, our obstructions, our solicitudes, our hopes. 
We have told you the desire of our hearts. We do not 
ask to be relieved from this or that incapacity, nor the 



560 Penal Laws 

abolition of this or that odious distinction ; not even, 
perhaps, to be, in the fulness of time, and in the accom- 
plishment of the great comprehensive scheme of legisla- 
tion, finally incorporated with you in the enjoyment of 
the same constitution. Even beyond that mark we have 
an ultimate and, if possible, an object of more inferior 
desire. We look for a union of affections, a gradual and 
therefore a total obliteration of all the animosities (on 
our part they are long extinct), and all prejudices which 
have kept us disjoined. 

" We come to you a great accession to the Protestant 
interest, with hearts and minds suitable to such an end. 
We do not come, as jealous and suspicious rivals, to 
gavel the constitution, but, with fraternal minds, to parti-^ 
cipate in the great incorporeal inheritance of freedom, to 
be held according to the laws and customs of the realm, 
and by our immediate fealty and allegiance to the king; 
and so may you receive us. 

" And we shall ever pray," etc. 

Objections having been made to this petition, upon 
Mr. O'Hara's presenting it, as being informal, he with- 
drew it; and the general committee, finding that so bold 
and explicit a statement of their case had given offence, 
prepared another petition, merely praying that the house 
would take into consideration whether the removal of 
some of the grievances of the petitioners might not be 
compatible with Protestant security. This petition was 
presented by Mr. Egan on the 18th of February, and 
on the 20th was afterward rejected, on a division of two 
hundred to twenty-three. 

On the same day was also rejected a petition from 
the Protestant inhabitants of Belfast, which went much 
further than the petition of the Catholics, as it required 
that the}^ should be placed on the same footing with 
their Protestant fellow-subjects. 

It was on the 3d of January of this year that Mr. Burke 



In the Reign of George III. 561 

published his letter to Sir Hercules Langrishe, in which 
he gave that learned and liberal opinion upon the sub- 
ject of the elective franchise which, it is said, obtained 
the roval assent to the measure that afterward was 
adopted for conceding it. This letter was admirably 
well adapted to meet every species of objection, moral, 
local and constitutional. It was calculated to remove 
the prejudices of the Church of England, and every sect 
of Protestant dissenters ; and, above all, it was quite 
conclusive as a demonstration of the compatibility of 
Catholic emancipation with the coronation oath. 

At a meeting of the general committee, on the 4th of 
February, the following resolutions were agreed to, and 
afterward published, with an address to the Protestants, 
written by Mr. R. Burke, and corrected by his father. 
To this address were added the answers of the foreign 
Catholic universities to questions that had been put to 
them in 1789, at the desire of Mr. Pitt, concerning the 
existence and extent of the Popish dispensing-power: — 

"Resolved, That this committee has been informed that 
reports have been circulated that the application of the 
Catholics for relief extends to unlimited and total eman- 
cipation, and that attempts have been made, wickedly 
and falsely, to instil into the minds of the Protestants of 
this kingdom an opinion that our applications were pre- 
ferred in a tone of menace. 

" Resolved, That several Protestant gentlemen have ex 
pressed great satisfaction on being individually informed 
of the real extent and respectful manner of the applica- 
tions for relief, and have assured us that nothing could 
have excited jealousy or apparent opposition to us from 
our Protestant countrymen, but the above-mentioned 
misapprehension. 

" Resolved, That we therefore deem it necessary to 
declare that the whole of our late applications, whether 
to his majesty's ministers, to men in power, or to private 



562 Penal Laws 

members of the legislature, as well as our intended peti- 
tion, neither did nor does contain anything, or extend 
further, either in substance or in principle, than the four 
following objects : — 

" 1. Admission to 1 the profession and practice of the law. 

" 2. Capacity to serve as county magistrates. 

" 3. A right to be summoned and to serve on grand 
and petty juries. 

"4. The right of voting in counties only for Protestant 
members of parliament, in such a manner, however, as 
that a Roman Catholic freeholder should not vote unless 
he either rented or cultivated a farm of twenty pounds 
per annum, in addition to his forty shilling freehold, or 
else possessed a freehold to the amount of twenty pounds 
a year. 

" Resolved, That in our opinion these applications, not 
extending to any other objects than the above, are 
moderate, and absolutely necessary for our general allevi- 
ation, and more particularly for the protection of the 
Catholic farmers and the peasantry of Ireland ; and that 
they do not, in any degree, endanger either Church or 
state, or endanger the security of the Protestant interest. 

" Resolved, That we never had an idea or thought so 
extravagant as that of menacing or intimidating our Pro- 
testant brethren, much less the legislature ; and that we 
disclaim the violent and turbulent intentions imputed to 
us in some of the public prints, and circulated in private 
conversation. 

" Resolved, That we refer to the known disposition of 
the Roman Catholics of this kingdom, to our dutiful 
oehavior during a long series of years, and particularly 
to the whole tenor of our late proceedings, for the full 
refutation of every charge of sedition and disloyalty. 

" Resolved, That, for the more ample and detailed ex- 
posure of all the evil reports and calumnies circulated 
against us, an address to our Protestant fellow-subjects, 



In the Reign of George III. 563 

and to the public in general, be printed by the order 
and in the name of the general committee. " 

The queries and answers concerning the Popish dis- 
pensing-power are as follows : — 

" 1 st. Has the pope, or cardinals, or any body of men, 
or any individual of the Church of Rome, any civil 
authority, power, or jurisdiction, or preeminence what- 
soever, within the realm of England? 

" 2d. Can the pope, or cardinals, or any body of men, 
or any individual of the Church of Rome, absolve or 
dispense his majesty's subjects from their oath of alle- 
giance upon any pretext whatsoever? 

" 3d. Is there any principle in the tenets of the Catholic 
faith by which Catholics are justified in not keeping 
faith with heretics, or other persons differing from them 
in religious opinions, in any transaction either of a public 
or a private nature ? " 

Abstract from the answer of the Sacred Faculty of 
Divinity of Paris to the above queries. 

After an introduction according to the usual forms of 
the university, they answer the first query by declaring : — 

" Neither the pope, nor the cardinals, nor any body of 
men, nor any other person of the Church of Rome, hath 
any civil authority, civil power, civil jurisdiction or civil 
preeminence whatever, in any kingdom, consequently, 
none in the kingdom of England, by reason of virtue of 
any authority, power, jurisdiction, or preeminence by 
divine institution inherent in or granted, or by any other 
means belonging, to the pope or the Church of Rome. 
This doctrine the Sacred Faculty of Divinity of Paris 
has always held, and upon every occasion maintained, 
and has rigidly proscribed the contrary doctrines from 
her schools." 

Answer to the second query : — 

" Neither the pope, nor the cardinals, nor any body of 
men, nor any person of the Church of Rome, can, by 



564 Penal Laws 

virtue of the keys, absolve or release the subjects of the 
King of England from their oath of allegiance." 

This and the first query are so intimately connected, 
that the answer of the first immediately and naturally 
applies to the second, etc. 
f Answer to the third query : — 

" There is no tenet in the Catholic Church by which 
Catholics are justified in not keeping faith with heretics 
or those who differ from them in matters of religion. 
The tenet, that it is lawful to break faith with heretics, is 
so repugnant to common honesty, and the opinions of 
Catholics, that there is nothing of which those who have 
defended the Catholic faith against Protestants have 
complained more heavily than the malice and calumny 
of their adversaries in imputing this tenet to them," etc., 
etc. 

" Given at Paris, in the General Assembly of the 
Sorbonne, held on Thursday, the elev.enth day before the 
Calends of March, 1789." (Signed in due form.) 

" University of Louvain. 

" The Faculty of Divinity at Louvain, having been 
requested to give her opinion upon the questions above 
stated, does it with readiness ; but struck with astonish- 
ment that such questions should, at the end of this 
eighteenth century, be proposed to any learned body by 
inhabitants of a kingdom that glories in the talents and 
discernment of its natives. The Faculty being assembled 
for the above purpose, it is agreed, with the unanimous 
assent of all voices, to answer the first and second 
queries absolutely in the -negative. 

11 The Faculty does not think it incumbent upon her, in 
this place, to enter upon the proof of her opinion, or to 
show how it is supported by passages in the Holy Scrip- 
tures or the writings of antiquity. That has already 
been done by Bossuet, De Marca, the two Barclays, 



In the Reign of George III 565 

Goldastus, the Pithseuses, Argentre, Widrington, and his 
majesty, King James I, in his Dissertation against Bel- 
larmine and Du Perron, and by many others," etc., etc. 

The Faculty then proceeds to declare that the sover- 
eign power of the state is in nowise (not even indirectly, 
as it is termed) subject to, or dependent upon, any other 
power, though it be a spiritual power, or even though 
it be instituted for eternal salvation, etc., etc. 

That no man, or any assembly of men, however 
eminent in dignity and power, nor even the whole body 
of the Catholic Church, though assembled in general 
council, can, upon any ground of pretence whatsoever, 
weaken the bond of union between the sovereign and 
the people, still less can they absolve or free the subjects 
from their oath of allegiance. 

Proceeding to the third question, the said Faculty of 
Divinity, in perfect wonder that such a question should 
be proposed, most positively and unequivocally answers 
that there is not, and there never has been, among the 
Catholics, or in the doctrines of the Church of Rome, 
any law or principle which makes it lawful for Catholics 
to break their faith with heretics or others of a different 
persuasion from themselves, in matters of religion, either 
in public or private concerns. 

" The Faculty declares the doctrine of the Catholics to 
be, that the divine and natural law, which makes it a 
duty to keep faith and promises, is the same, and is 
neither shaken or diminished even if those with whom the 
engagement is made hold erroneous opinions in mat- 
ters of religion," etc., etc. 

(Signed in due form on the iSth November, 1788.) 

" University of Valladolid. 

" To the first question it is answered, that neither 

pope, cardinals, or even a general council, have any civil 

authority, power, jurisdiction or preeminence, directlv 



566 Penal Laws 

or indirectly, in the kingdom of Great Britain, or over 
any other kingdom or province in which they possess 
no temporal dominion. 

" To the second it is answered, that neither pope nor 
cardinals, nor even a general council, can absolve the 
subjects of Great Britain from their oaths of allegiance, 
or dispense with their obligation. 

" To the third it is answered, that the obligation of 
keeping faith is grounded on the law of nature, which 
binds all men equally, without respect to their religious 
opinions ; and with regard to Catholics, it is still more 
cogent, as it is confirmed by the principles of their 
religion." 

(Signed in the usual form, February 17th, 1789.) 

While the general committee were occupied in carry- 
ing these measures into effect, parliament had passed a 
law * for removing part of the restraints and disabili- 
ties, to which the Catholics were liable. It was intro- 
duced into the House of Commons by Sir H. Langrishe, 
and being supported by government, it met with little 
opposition. 

But the conduct of government on this occasion was 
so suspicious, and its favors conferred with so bad a 
grace,f that it did not in the least degree contribute to 
appease the irritation which its former conduct, in 1791, 
had so justly given rise to. 

By this act, Catholics may be called to the bar, and 
may be admitted as students into the King's Inns. Attor- 
neys may take Catholic apprentices, and are relieved 
from the necessity of educating their children Protestants, 
and barristers may marry Catholics. Catholic barristers 
and apprentices to attorneys must, nevertheless, qualify 

* 32 George III. c. 21. 

i This measure was introduced into the House of Commons without any 
communication with the general committee. 



In the Reign of George III. 567 

themselves for the benefits of this act by taking the oath 
of the 13th and 14th George III, c. 35. 

By this act, so much of 9 William III, c. 3, and 2 
Anne, c. 6, as prevents Protestants from intermarrying 
with Papists, is repealed ; but Protestants married to 
Catholics are not to vote at elections; and the law is 
not altered which makes it a capital felony for a priest 
to celebrate the marriage of a Protestant and a Catholic, 
though the very next act in the statute-book enables a 
Presbyterian clergyman to celebrate the marriage of a 
Protestant and a Presbyterian. 

By this act, also, the 7 William III, for restraining 
foreign education, is repealed, and Catholics are per- 
mitted to teach school without taking out a license from 
the ordinary ; and so much, likewise, of 8 Anne, c. 3, is 
repealed which enacts that no Papists shall take more 
than two apprentices. 

In the course of the debates upon this act, the Cath- 
olics were accused of professing tenets inimical to good 
order and government, and with harboring pretensions 
to the forfeited estates of their forefathers, and with wish- 
ing to subvert the existing establishment, that they 
might reinstate a Popish one instead. The general com- 
mittee were also accused of being turbulent and seditious 
agitators. It was asserted that the petition which they 
presented this year to parliament was the act of an 
obscure faction, confined merely to the capital, and dis- 
avowed by the great mass of the Catholics. 

In order to repel the first of these accusations, the 
declaration of 1774, which has already been introduced 
into this work, was republished, and signed by Dr. Tory 
and the principal Catholic clergy and laity of the kingdom. 
The second charge was not easy to be contradicted. It 
was one of most serious importance to the interests of the 
whole body, and, if suffered to pass without the fallacy of 
it being exposed, would have contributed to defeat all 



568 Penal Laws 

the exertions which had been made to obtain redress. 
Urged by these considerations, and also by a communi- 
cation which, about this time, was made from the first 
authority, that a further application for relief would have 
great weight with his majesty and with parliament, if 
the committee were qualified to declare that it was the 
measure of every Catholic in the kingdom,* the committee 
devised a plan by which a convention of delegates should 
be held, elected by the whole Catholic body. A circular 
letter was immediately written, directing that each parish 
should proceed to choose one or two electors, and that 
these electors should then elect from one to four dele- 
gates, as it might appear most expedient to them. Their 
directions were obeyed, and carried into effect with so 
much promptitude and good order, that the convention 
were able to meet on the 3d of December, without the 
smallest degree of tumult or agitation having occurred 
in any part of the kingdom. 

In the meantime, this circular-letter had been laid hold 
of by the government, as a proper instrument with which 
to rekindle the embers of religious animosities. Where 
the partisans of government were sufficiently strong, 
corporate and county meetings were held to reprobate 
the plan of the general committee ; but if defeat, or even 
formidable resistance, was apprehended, similar resolu- 
tions were entered into by the grand juries, where 
success could easily be secured from the influence of 
government in their appointment. 

In order to counteract the effect of these resolutions, 
those Protestants who had the virtue and the good sense 
neither to become the toolsnor thedupes of government, 
held a great number of meetings in different towns and 
districts. 

Some few, w.ith Londonderry at their head, expressed 

* See the plan for conducting the election of delegates, published 1793. 
Plowden, vol. ii, Ap. 89. 



In the Reign of George III. 569 

themselves favorable to a gradual admission of the 
Catholics; but the great majority followed the example 
of an immense body of volunteers who, when assembled 
together at their commemoration meeting, declared their 
sentiments in favor of the immediate and unqualified 
extension of the right of suffrage to the whole Catholic 
body. 

When the convention met in December, their proceed- 
ings were wise, temperate, and decisive, and conducted 
without any violation of the laws of the land, or of the 
good order of society. At the first meeting the follow- 
ing petition to the king was unanimously agreed to, 
pursuant to instructions which had been given to each 
delegate by his respective electors : — 

" To the King's Most Excellent Majesty, the hum- 
ble PETITION OF THE UNDERSIGNED CATHOLICS, ON 
BEHALF OF THEMSELVES AND THE REST OF HIS CATH- 
OLIC SUBJECTS OF THE KINGDOM OF IRELAND. 
" Most Gracious Sovereign : — 

" We, your majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects 
of your kingdom of Ireland, professing the Catholic 
religion, presume to approach your majesty, who are 
the common father of ail your people, and humbly to 
submit to your consideration the manifold incapacities 
and oppressive disqualifications under which we labor. 

" For, may it please your majesty, after a century of 
uninterrupted loyalty, in which time five foreign wars 
and two domestic rebellions have occurred ; after having 
taken every oath of allegiance and fidelity to your 
majesty, and given, and being still ready to give, every 
pledge which can be devised for their peaceable 
demeanor and unconditional submission to the laws, the 
Catholics of Ireland stand obnoxious to a long catalogue 
of statutes, inflicting on dutiful and meritorious sub- 
jects pains and penalties of an extent and severity which 



570 Penal Laws 

scarce any degree of delinquency can warrant, and pro- 
longed to a period when no necessity can be alleged 
to justify their continuance. 

" In the first place we beg leave, with all humility, to 
represent to your majesty that, notwithstanding the 
lowest departments in your majesty's fleets and armies 
are largely supplied by our numbers, and your revenue 
in this country to a great degree supported by our con- 
tributions, we are disabled from serving your majesty in 
any office of trust and emolument whatsoever, civil or 
military, — a proscription which disregards capacity or 
merit, admits of neither qualification nor degree, and rests 
as an universal stigma of distrust upon the whole body 
of your Catholic subjects. 

" We are interdicted from all municipal stations, and 
the franchise of all guilds and corporations ; and our 
exclusion from the benefits annexed to those situations 
is not an evil terminating in itself, for, by giving an 
advantage over us to those in whom they are exclusively 
vested, they establish throughout the kingdom a species 
of qualified monopoly, uniformly operating in our dis- 
favor, contrary to the spirit, and highly detrimental to 
the freedom, of trade. 

" We may not found nor endow any university, college 
or school for the education of our children, and we 
are interdicted from obtaining degrees in the University 
of Dublin by the several charters and statutes now in 
force therein. 

" We are totally prohibited from keeping or using 
weapons for the defence of our houses, families or 
persons, whereby we are exposed to the violence of 
burglary, robbery and assassination ; and to enforce 
this prohibition, contravening that great original law 
of nature which enjoins us to self-defence, a variety of 
statutes exist, not less grievous and oppressive in their 
provisions than unjust in their object; by one of which, 



In the Reign of George III. 571 

enacted so lately as within these sixteen years, every 
one of your majesty's Catholic subjects, of whatever 
rank or degree, peer or peasant, is compellable by any 
magistrate to come forward and convict himself of what 
may be thought a singular offence in a country profess- 
ing to be free : keeping arms for his defence ; or, if he 
shall refuse so to do, may incur not only fine and im- 
prisonment, but the vile and ignominious punishments 
of the pillory and whipping, — penalties appropriated to 
the most infamous malefactors, and more terrible to a 
liberal mind than death itself. No Catholic whatsoever, 
as we apprehend, has his personal property secure. The 
law allows and encourages the disobedient and unnatural 
child to conform, and deprive him of it; the unhappy 
father does not, even by the surrender of his all, purchase 
his repose: he may be attacked by new bills, if his 
future industry be successful, and again be plundered by 
due process of law. 

" We are excluded, or may be excluded, from all 
petit juries in civil actions, where one of the parties is a 
Protestant; and that we are further excluded from all 
petit juries in trials, by information or indictment, founded 
on any of the Popery laws, by which law we most 
huinbly submit to your majesty that your loyal subjects, 
the Catholics of Ireland, are in this, their native land, in a 
worse situation than that of aliens, for they may demand 
an equitable privilege denied to us: of having half their 
jury aliens like themselves. 

" We may not serve on grand juries unless, — which it 
is scarcely possible can ever happen, — there should not be 
found a sufficiency of Protestants to complete the panel, 
contrary to that humane and equitable principle of the 
law which says that no man shall be convicted of any 
capital offence, unless by the concurring verdicts of two 
juries of his neighbors and equals, whereby (and to this 
we humbly presume more particularly to implore your 



572 Penal Laws 

royal attention) we are deprived of the great palladium 
of the constitution : trial by our peers, independent of the 
manifest injustice of our property being taxed in assess- 
ments of a body from which we are formally excluded. 
" We avoid a further enumeration of inferior griev- 
% ances ; but, may it please your majesty, there remains 
one incapacity which your loyal subjects, the Catholics 
of Ireland, feel with most poignant anguish of mind, as 
being the badge of unmerited disgrace and ignominy, 
and the cause and bitter aggravation of all our other 
calamities : we are deprived of the elective franchise, to 
the manifest perversion of the spirit of the constitution, 
inasmuch as your faithful subjects are thereby taxed 
where they are not represented actually or virtually, 
and bound by laws, in the framing of which they have no 
power to give or withhold their assent. And we most 
humbly implore your majesty to believe that this, our 
prime and heavy grievance, is not an evil merely specu- 
lative, but is attended with great distress to all ranks, and, 
in many instances, with the total ruin and destruction 
of the lower orders of your majesty's faithful and loyal 
subjects, the Catholics of Ireland ; for, may it please your 
majesty, — not to mention the infinite variety of advan- 
tages, in point of protection and otherwise, which the 
enjoyment of the elective franchise gives to those who 
possess it, nor the consequent inconveniences to which 
those who are deprived thereof are liable ; not to mention 
the disgrace to three-fourths of your loyal subjects of 
Ireland, of living, the only body of men incapable of fran- 
chise, in a nation possessing a free constitution, — it con- 
tinually happens, and of necessity, from the malignant 
nature of the law, must happen, that multitudes of the 
Catholic tenantry in divers counties in this kingdom are, 
at the expiration of their leases, expelled from their tene- 
ments and farms to make room for Protestant freeholders, 
who, by their votes, may contribute to the weight and 



In the Reign of George III. 573 

importance of their landlords : a circumstance which 
renders the recurrence of a general election, that period 
which is the boast an.d laudable triumph of our Protestant 
brethren, a visitation and heavy curse to us, your majesty's 
dutiful and loyal subjects. And, may it please your 
majesty, this uncertainty of possession to your majesty's 
Catholic subjects operates as a perpetual restraint and 
discouragement on industry and the spirit of cultivation, 
whereby it happens that this, your majesty's kingdom of 
Ireland, possessing many and great natural advantages 
of soil and climate, so as to be exceeded therein by few, 
if any, countries on the earth, is yet prevented from 
availing herself thereof so fully as she otherwise might, 
to the furtherance of your majesty's honor, and the more 
effectual support of your service. 

" And, may it please your majesty, the evil does not 
even rest here; for many of your majesty's Catholic 
subjects, to preserve their families from total destruction, 
submit to a nominal conformity, against their conviction 
and their conscience, and preferring perjury to famine, 
take oaths which they utterly disbelieve : a circumstance 
which, we doubt not, will shock your majesty's well- 
known and exemplary piety, not less than the misery 
which drives those unhappy wretches to so desperate a 
measure, must distress and wound your royal clemency 
and commiseration. 

" And may it please your majesty, though we might 
here rest our case on its own merits, justice and 
expediency, yet we further presume humbly to submit to 
your majesty that the right of franchise was, with divers 
other rights, enjoyed by the Catholics of this kingdom, 
from the first adoption of the English constitution by 
our forefathers, was secured to at least a great part of 
our body by the Treaty of Limerick; 1691, guaranteed 
by your majesty's loyal predecessors, King William 
and Queen Mary, and finally confirmed and ratified by 



574 Penal Laws 

parliament ; notwithstanding- which, and breach of the 
public faith of the nation, thus solemnly pledged, for 
which our ancestors paid a valuable consideration, in the 
surrender of their arms and a great part of this kingdom, 
and notwithstanding the most scrupulous adherence, 
on our part, to the terms of the said treaty, and our 
unremitting loyalty from that day to the present, the 
said right of elective franchise was finally and universally 
taken away from the Catholics of Ireland so lately as the 
first year of his majesty, King George II. 

" And when we thus presume to submit this infraction 
of the Treaty of Limerick to your majesty's royal notice, 
it is not that we ourselves consider it to be the strong 
part of our case, for, though our rights were recognized, 
they were by no means created by that treaty ; and we 
do with all humility conceive that, if no such event as 
the said treaty had ever taken place, your majesty's 
Catholic subjects, from their unvarying loyalty and 
dutiful submission to the laws, and from the great 
support afforded by them to your majesty's government 
in this country, as well as in their personal service in 
your majesty's fleets and armies, as from the taxes and 
revenues levied on their property, are fully competent 
and justly entitled to participate and enjoy the blessings 
of the constitution of their country. 

" And now that we have, with all humility, submitted 
our grievances to your majesty, permit us, most gracious 
sovereign, again to represent our sincere attachment to 
the constitution, as established in the three estates of 
king, lords, and commons ; our uninterrupted loyalty, 
peaceful demeanor, and submission to the laws for one 
hundred years, and our determination to persevere in the 
same dutiful conduct, which has, under your majesty's 
happy auspices, procured us those relaxations of the 
penal statutes which the wisdom of the legislature has, 
from time to time, thought proper to grant. We humbly 



In the Reign of George III. 575 

presume to hope that } T our majesty, in jour paternal 
goodness and affection toward a numerous and oppressed 
body of your loyal subjects, may be graciously pleased 
to recommend to your parliament in Ireland to take 
into their consideration the whole of our situation, our 
numbers, our merits, and our sufferings; and as we do 
not give place to any of your majesty's subjects in lo}^alty 
and attachment to your sacred person, we cannot sup- 
press our wishes of being restored to the rights and 
privileges of the constitution of our country, and there- 
by becoming more worthy, as well as more capable, of 
rendering your majesty that service which it is not less 
our duty than our inclination to afford. 

" So may your majesty transmit to your latest pos- 
terity a crown secured by public advantage and public 
affection, and so may your royal person become, if pos- 
sible, more dear to your grateful people." 

On the 2d January, 1793, the gentlemen who had been 
deputed to present this petition, were introduced to his 
majesty by Mr. Dundas, and on the 10th of the same 
month Lord Westmoreland, in a speech from the throne 
to both houses of parliament, said : " I have it in particu- 
lar command from his majesty to recommend it to }'ou 
to apply yourselves to the consideration of such measures 
as may be most likely to strengthen and cement a general 
union of sentiment among all classes of his majesty's 
subjects, in support of the established constitution. With 
this view his majesty trusts that the situation of his 
majesty's Catholic subjects will engage your serious 
attention, and in consideration of this subject he relies 
on the wisdom and liberality of parliament." 

In a few days afterward Major Hobart, the chief sec- 
retary of the lord-lieutenant, presented to the House of 
Commons a petition from the Catholics, and soon after 
the royal assent was given to the following " act for 



57°" Penal Laws 

affording relief to his majesty's Popish, or Roman Cath- 
olic, subjects of Ireland:" — 

" Whereas various acts of parliament have been passed 
imposing on his majesty's subjects professing the Popish, 
or Roman Catholic religion, many restraints and dis- 
abilities to which other subjects of this realm are not lia- 
ble, znd from the peaceable and loyal demeanor of his 
majesty's Popish, or Roman Catholic subjects it is fit that 
such restraints and disabilities shall be discontinued : 

"i. Be it therefore enacted by the king's most excellent 
majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the lords 
spiritual and temporal, and commons, in this present 
parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, 
that his majesty's subjects being Papists, or persons 
professing the Popish, or Roman Catholic religion, or 
married to Papists, or persons professing the Popish, or 
Roman Catholic religion, or educating any of their chil- 
dren in that religion, shall not be liable or subject to any 
penalties, forfeitures, disabilities or incapacities, or to 
any laws for the limitation, charging or discovering of 
their estates and property, real or personal, or touching 
the acquiring of property, or securities affecting property, 
save such as his majesty's subjects of the Protestant 
religion are liable and subject to ; and that such parts of 
all oaths as are required to be taken by persons, in order 
to qualify themselves for voting at elections for members 
to serve in parliament; and also such parts of all oaths 
required to be taken by persons voting at elections for 
members to serve in parliament as import to deny that 
the said person taking the same is a Papist, or married to 
a Papist, or educates his children in the Popish religion, 
shall not hereafter be required to be taken by any voter, 
but shall be omitted by the person administering the 
same ; and that it shall not be necessary, in order to en- 
title a Papist, or person professing the Popish, or Roman 
Catholic religion, to vote at an election for members to 



In the Reign of George III. 577 

serve in parliament, that he should at, or previous to his 
voting, take the oaths of allegiance and abjuration, any 
statute now in force to the contrary of any of the said 
matters in anywise notwithstanding. 

" 2. Provided always, and be it further enacted, that 
all Papists, or persons professing the Popish, or Roman 
Catholic, religion, who may claim to have a right of 
voting for members to serve in parliament, or of voting 
for magistrates in any city, town corporate, or borough, 
within this kingdom, be hereby required to perform all 
qualifications, registries, and other requisites, which are 
now required of his majesty's Protestant subjects in like 
cases by any law or laws now in force in this kingdom, 
save and except such oaths and parts of oaths as are 
hereinbefore excepted. 

" 3. And provided always, that nothing hereinbefore 
contained shall extend, or be construed to extend, to 
repeal or alter any law or act of parliament now in force, 
by which certain qualifications are required to be per- 
formed by persons enjoying any offices or places of 
trust under his majesty, his heirs and successors, other 
than as hereinafter is enacted. 

" 4. Provided also, that nothing herein contained shall 
extend, or be construed to extend, to give Papists, or 
persons professing the Popish religion, a right to vote at 
any parish vestry for levying money to rebuild or repair 
any parish church, or respecting the devising or dis- 
posal of the income of any estate belonging to any 
church or parish, or for the salary of the parish clerk, or 
at the selection of any churchwarden. 

" 5. Provided always, that nothing contained in this 
act shall extend to, or be construed to affect, any action 
or suit now pending, which shall have been brought or 
Instituted previous to the commencement of this session 
of parliament. 

"6. Provided also, that nothing herein contained shall 



578 Penal Laws 

extend to authorize any Papist, or person professing the 
Popish, or Roman Catholic religion, to have or keep in 
his hands or possession any arms, armor, ammunition, 
or any warlike stores, sword-blades, barrels, locks, or 
stocks of guns or fire-arms, or to exempt such persons 
from any forfeiture or penalty inflicted by any act re- 
specting arms, armor or ammunition, in the hands or 
possession of any Papist, or respecting Papists having' or 
keeping such warlike stores, save and except Papists, or 
persons of the Popish, or Roman Catholic religion seized 
of a freehold estate of ^"ioo a year, or possessed of a 
personal estate of £1,000 or upward, who are hereby 
authorized to keep arms and ammunition as Protestants 
now by law may; and also save and except Papists, or 
Roman Catholics, possessing a freehold estate of£io 
yearly value and less than £100, or a personal estate of 
£300 and less than £1,000, who shall have, at the session 
of the peace in the county in which the}' reside, taken the 
oath of allegiance prescribed to be taken by an act passed 
in the thirteenth and fourteenth years of his present 
majesty's reign, entitled ' an act to enable his majesty's 
subjects, of whatever persuasion, to testify their allegiance 
to him,' and also, in open court, swear and subscribe an 
affidavit that they are possessed of a freehold estate, yield- 
ing a clear yearly profit to the person making the same 
of £10, or a personal property of £300 above his just debts, 
specifying therein the name and nature of such freehold, 
and nature of such personal property, which affidavits 
shall be carefully preserved by the clerk of the peace, who 
shall have for his trouble a fee of sixpence, and no more, 
for every such affidavit; and the persons making such 
affidavits, and possessing such property, may keep and use 
arms and ammunition as Protestants may, so long as they 
shall respectively possess a property of the annual value 
of £10 and upward, if freehold, or the value of £300 if 
personal, any statute to the contrary notwithstanding. 



In the Reign of George III 579 

" 7. And be it enacted that it shall and may be lawful 
for Papists, or persons professing the Popish, or Roman 
Catholic religion, to hold, exercise, and enjoy all civil 
and military offices, or places of trust or profit, under his 
majesty, his heirs and successors, in this kingdom, and 
to hold, to take degrees, or any professorship in, or to 
be masters in, or fellows of any college to be hereafter 
founded in this kingdom, provided that such college shall 
be a member of the University of Dublin, and shall not 
be founded exclusively for the education of Papists, or 
persons professing the Popish, or Roman Catholic re- 
ligion, or to hold any office or place of trust in, and to be 
a member of any lay body corporate, except the College 
of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen Elizabeth, 
near Dublin, without taking and subscribing the oath of 
allegiance, supremacy or abjuration, or making or sub- 
scribing the declaration required to be taken, made, and 
subscribed, to enable any person to hold and enjoy any 
of such places, and without receiving the sacrament of 
the Lord's Supper according to the rites and ceremonies 
of the Church of Ireland, any law, statute, or by-law of 
any corporation to the contrary notwithstanding ; pro- 
vided that every such person shall take and subscribe the 
oath appointed by the act passed in the thirteenth and 
fourteenth 3-ears of his majesty's reign, entitled ' an act 
to enable his majesty's subjects, of whatever persuasion, 
to testify their allegiance to him;' and also the oath and 
declaration following, that is to say : — 

" ' I, A. B., do hereby declare that I do profess the 
Roman Catholic religion. 

" ' I, A. B., do swear that I do abjure, condemn, and 
detest, as unchristian and impious, the principle that it is 
lawful to murder, destroy, or any way injure any person 
whatsoever, for or under the pretence of being a heretic; 
and I do declare solemnly, before God. that 1 believe 
that no act, in itself unjust, immoral or wicked, can ever 



580 Penal Laws 

be justified or excused by or under pretence or color 
that it was done either for the good of the Church, or 
in obedience to any ecclesiastical power whatsoever. I 
also declare that it is not an article of the Catholic 
faith, neither am I thereby required to believe or profess 
that the pope is infallible,* or that I am bound to obey any 
order in its own nature immoral, though the pope or any 
ecclesiastical power should issue or direct such order; 
but, on the contrary, I hold that it would be sinful in me 
to pay any respect or obedience thereto. I further 
declare that I do not believe that any sin whatsoever 
committed by me can be forgiven at the mere will of any 
pope, or of any priest, or from any person or persons 
whatsoever; but that sincere sorrow for past sins, a firm 
and sincere resolution to avoid future guilt and to atone 
to God, are previous and indispensable requisites to estab- 
lish a well-founded expectation of forgiveness ; and that 
any person who receives absolution without these pre- 
vious requisites, so far from obtaining thereby any remis- 
sion of his sins, incurs the additional guilt of violating a 
sacrament : and I do swear that I will defend, to the utmost 
of my power, the settlement and arrangement of property 
in this country as established by the laws now in being. I 
do hereby disclaim, disavow, and solemnly abjure any 
intention to subvert the present Church establishment, for 
the purpose of substituting a Catholic establishment in 
its stead ; and I do solemnly swear that I will not exercise 
any privilege to which I am or may become entitled, to 
disturb and weaken the Protestant religion and Protestant 
government of this kingdom. So help me God.' 

" 8. And be it enacted that Papists, or persons pro- 
fessing the Popish, or Roman Catholic religion may be 
capable of being elected professors of medicine upon 
the foundation of Sir Patrick Dunn, any law or statute to 
the contrary notwithstanding. 

* Papal Infallibility not having then been a defined article of faith. 



In tke Reign of George III 581 

" 9. Provided always, and be it enacted, that nothing 
herein contained shall extend, or be construed to extend, 
to enable any person to sit or vote in either house of par- 
liament, or to hold, exercise, or enjoy the office of Lord- 
Lieutenant, Lord-Deputy, or other Chief Governor or 
Governors of this kingdom, Lord High Chancellor or 
Keeper, or Commissioner of the Great Seal of this king- 
dom, Lord High Treasurer, Chancellor of the Exchequer, 
Chief Justice of the Court of King's Bench or Common 
Pleas, Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer, 
Justice of the Court of King's Bench or Common Pleas, 
or Baron of the Court of Exchequer, Judge of the High 
Court of Admiralty, Master or Keeper of the Rolls, 
Secretary of State, Keeper of the Privy Seal, Vice-Treas- 
urer, Teller and Cashier of the Exchequer, or Auditor- 
General, Lieutenant, or Governor, or Custos Rotulorum 
of Counties, Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant, Lord- 
Deputy, or other Chief Governor or Governors of this 
kingdom, Member of His Majesty's most Honorable Privy 
Council, Prime Sergeant, Attorney-General, Solicitor- 
General, Second and Third Sergeants-at-Law, or King's 
Counsel, Masters in Chancery, Provost, or Fellow of the 
College of the Holy and Undivided Trinity of Queen 
Elizabeth, near Dublin, Postmaster-General, Master and 
Lieutenant-General of His Majesty's Forces, Generals on 
the Staff, and Sheriffs and Sub-sheriffs of any county in 
this kingdom, or any office contrary to the rules, orders 
and directions made and established by the Lord-Lieu- 
tenant and Council, in pursuance of the act passed in the 
seventeenth and eighteenth years of the reign of King 
Charles II, entitled 'an act for the explaining of some 
doubts arising upon an act entitled " an act for the better 
execution of his majesty's gracious declaration for the 
settlement of his kingdom of Ireland, and satisfaction of 
the several interests of adventurers, soldiers, and other 
h*$ majesty's subjects there, and for making some altera- 



5^2 Penal Laws 

tion of, and additions unto the said act, for the more 
speedy and effectual settlement of this kingdom," unless 
he shall have taken, made, and subscribed the oaths and 
declaration, and performed the several requisites which 
by any law heretofore made, and now of force, are 
required to enable any person to sit or vote, or to hold, 
exercise, and enjoy the said offices respectively.' 

" 10. Provided also, and be it enacted, that nothing 
in this act contained shall enable any Papist, or person 
professing the Popish, or Roman Catholic religion, to 
exercise any right of presentation to any ecclesiastical 
benefice whatsoever. 

"ii. And be it enacted that no Papist, or person pro- 
fessing the Popish, or Roman Catholic religion, shall be 
liable or subject to any penalty for not attending divine 
service on the Sabbath-day, called Sunday, in his or her 
parish church. 

" 12. Provided, also, and be it enacted, that nothing 
herein contained shall be construed to extend to authorize 
any Popish priest, or reputed Popish priest, to celebrate 
marriage between Protestant and Protestant, or between 
any person who hath been, or professed himself or her- 
self to be, a Protestant at any time within twelve months 
before such celebration of marriage, and a Papist, unless 
such Protestant and Papist should have been first married 
by a clergyman of the Protestant religion ; and that every 
Popish priest, or reputed Popish priest, who shall cele- 
brate any marriage between two Protestants, or between 
any such Protestant or Papist, unless such Protestant and 
Papist shall have been first married by a clergyman of 
the Protestant religion, shall forfeit the sum of .£500 to 
his majesty, upon conviction thereof." 

" 13. And whereas it may be expedient, in case his 

* In England the celebration of divine service in Catholic chapels is pro- 
tected by an act of parliament (31 George III, c. 32^) imposing a penalty of £iq 
upon any person disturbing it. No such protection exists in Ireland. 






In the Reign of George III 583 

majesty, his heirs and successors shall be pleased to 
alter the statutes of the College of the Holy and Undi- 
vided Trinity, near Dublin, and of the University of 
Dublin, as to enable persons professing- the Roman Cath- 
olic religion to enter into, or take degrees in the said 
university, to remove any obstacle which now exists by 
statute law, be it enacted : 

"That from and after the first day of June, 1793, it 
shall not be necessary for any person, upon taking any 
of the degrees usually conferred by the said university, 
to make or subscribe any declaration, or to take any 
oath save the oath of allegiance and abjuration, any law 
or statute to the contrary notwithstanding. 

" 14. Provided always, that no Papist or Roman 
Catholic, or person professing the Roman Catholic, or 
Popish religion, shall take any benefit by or under this 
act, unless he shall have first taken and subscribed the 
oath and declaration in this act contained and set forth, 
and also the said oath appointed by the said act, passed 
in the thirteenth and fourteenth years of his majesty's 
reign, entitled ' an act to enable his majesty's subjects, 
of whatever persuasion, to testify their allegiance to 
him,' in some one of his majesty's Four Courts of Dublin, 
or at the General Sessions of the Peace, or at any adjourn- 
ment thereof, to be holden for the county, city or borough, 
wherein such Papist or Roman Catholic, or person pro- 
fessing the Roman Catholic, or Popish religion, doth 
inhabit or dwell, or before the going judge or judges of 
assize, in the county wherein such Papist or Roman 
Catholic, or person professing the Roman Catholic, or 
Popish, religion, doth inhabit and dwell, in open court. 

"15. Provided always, and be it enacted, that the 
names of such persons as so shall take and subscribe 
the said oaths and declarations, with their titles and 
additions, shall be entered upon the rolls for that purpose, 
to be appointed by said respective courts ; and that 



584 Penal Laws 

the said rolls, once in every year, shall be transmitted to, 
and deposited in the rolls office, in this kingdom, to 
remain amongst the records thereof; and the masters 
or keepers of the rolls in this kingdom, or their lawful 
deputy or deputies, are hereby empowered and required 
to give and deliver to such person or persons, so taking 
and subscribing the said oaths and declarations, a certifi- 
cate or certificates of such person or persons having 
taken and subscribed the said oaths and declarations, 
for each of which certificate the sum of one shilling, and 
no more, shall be paid. 

" 16. And be it further provided and enacted that, 
from and after the first day of April, 1793, no freeholder, 
burgess, freeman, or inhabitant of this kingdom, being 
a Papist or Roman Catholic, or person professing the 
Roman Catholic, or Popish religion, shall at any time be 
capable of giving his vote for the electing of any knight 
or knights of any shire or county within this kingdom, 
or citizen or burgess to serve in any parliament, until 
he shall have first produced and shown to the high sheriff 
of the said county, or his deputy or deputies, at any elec- 
tion of a knight or knights of the said shire, and to the 
respective chief officer or officers of any city, borough 
or town corporate to whom the return oi any citizen or 
burgess to serve in parliament, such certificate of his 
having taken and subscribed the said oaths and declara- 
tion, either from the rolls of office, or from the proper 
officer of the court in which the said oaths and declara- 
tion shall be taken and subscribed ; and such person being 
a freeholder, freeman, burgess, or inhabitant, producing 
and showing such certificate, shall be then permitted to 
vote as amply and fully as any Protestant freeholder, free- 
man, burgess, or inhabitant of such county, city, borough, 
or town corporate, but not otherwise.'''* 

* As admission into the army and navy, and the privilege to hold revenue 
offices in Great Britain, are the only concessions that have been made to the 



In the Reign of George III. 585 

The general committee, in testimony of their gratitude 
to the king for this most important concession, presented 
the following address to the lord-lieutenant, to be by him 
transmitted to his majesty : — 

" Most Gracious Sovereign : 

" We, your majesty's most dutiful and loyal subjects, 
the Catholics of Ireland, animated with sentiments of 
the most lively gratitude, beg leave to approach your 
majesty with our sincere and heartfelt thanks for the sub- 
stantial benefits which, through your majesty's gracious 
recommendations, we have received from the wisdom and 
liberality of parliament. 

" Impressed with a deep sense of your majesty's 
goodness, we reflect that, in consequence of this last 
and signal instance of }^our royal favor, the disabilities 
under which we and our ancestors so long labored, have, 

Catholics since 1793, it may be as well to enumerate here, as in any other 
place, the various disabilities to which they are still liable : — 

Education. — They cannot teach school, unless they take the oaths of 13 and 
14 George III, c. 35. They cannot take Protestant scholars, or be ushers to 
Protestant schoolmasters, by 32 George III, c. 20. 

Guardianship. — They cannot be guardians, unless they take the oaths of 13 
and 14 George III, c. 35. If ecclesiastics, they cannot, under any circumstance, 
be guardians; nor can any Catholic be guardian to a child of a Protestant, by 30 
George III, c. 29. 

Marriage. — If a Catholic clergyman marries a Protestant and a Catholic, 
unless the marriage has been previously solemnized by a Protestant clergyman, 
the marriage is null and void, and he is liable to a penalty of ^"500, by 33 
George III, c. 21, § 12. 

Self-defence. — No Catholic can keep arms unless he possesses a freehold 
estate of ^10 per annum, or a personal estate of ^300. If so qualified, he must 
further qualify himself by taking the oaths of 13 and 14 George III, c. 35 (unless 
he has a freehold estate of ^"looper annum, or a personal estate of ^1,000, by 33 
George III, c. 21). 

Exercise of Religion.— The Catholic clergy must take the oaths of 13 and 
14 George III, c. 35, and register their place of abode, age and parish. No 
chapel can have a steeple or bell, and no rites or ceremonies of the religion or 
habits of their order are permitted, except within their several places of worship, 
or in private houses, by 21 and 22 George III, c. 24, § 6. 

Property. — The penal laws are in full force in respect to landed property 



586 Penal Laws 

in a considerable degree, been removed, the constitutional 
energy of three-fourths of your loyal subjects restored 
to their country, and themselves enabled to testify, in a 
manner more useful to your majesty's service, their 
devoted attachment to your person, family and govern- 
ment. Restored, as we now are, to such valuable 
privileges, it shall be our duty, as it is our inclination, to 
unite in support of our excellent constitution, as 
established in king, lords, and commons,— a constitution 
revered by us for its excellence, even when secluded 
from its blessings, and from which every advantage we 
derive becomes a new tie of fidelity and attachment. 

" Permit us, most gracious sovereign, to express our 
unfeigned satisfaction that, to a monarch endeared to us 
by so many proofs of clemency, belongs the glorious 
distinction of being the first to begin that work of 
emancipation, in accomplishment of which we humbly 

against all Catholics, and all Protestant purchasers from Catholics, when the 
Catholic proprietor has omitted to take the qualifying oaths of 13 and 14 George 
III, c— . 

" The Catholic guilty of such omission not merely risks the total loss of his 
landed property, but is immersed in fomenting litigation. His lands and 
tenements, and all collateral securities made and entered into for covering 
or protecting them, become discoverable, and may be sued for and recovered 
from him by any Protestant discoverer. The discoverer, so vested with this 
property, is enabled to find it out by every mode of inquisition, and to sue for 
it with every kind of privilege (8 Anne, c. 3, §§ 27 and 30). 

"Not only are the courts of law open to him, but he may enter [and this is 
the usual method] into either of the courts of equity. He may file his bills against 
those whom he suspects to be possessed of this forbidden property, against 
those whom he suspects to be their trustees, and against those whom he suspects 
to be privy to such ownership, and oblige them, under the guilt of penalties for 
perjury, to discover, upon oath, the exact nature and just value of their estates 
and trusts, in all particulars necessary to affect their forfeiture. In such suits 
the informer is not liable to the delays which the ordinary procedure of those 
courts throws in the way of the most equitable claimant, nor has the Catholic 
the indulgence allowed to the most fraudulent defendant: that of plea and demur- 
rer. He is obliged to answer the whole directly, upon his oath, and the old 
rule of 'extending benefit and restraining penalty is, by this law, struck out of 
the ancient jurisprudence.' " ("Statement of the Penal Laws," p. 307.) 

Franchises.— No Catholic can hold any office enumerated in § 9 of the 



In the Reign of George III. 587 

hope your majesty will enjoy the gratification of seeing 
your whole people united in the bonds of equal laws and 
equal liberty. 

" May your majesty long continue to reign in the 
hearts of your faithful subjects, dispensing, as common 
father to all your people, the inestimable blessings of 
freedom, peace and union." 

Although this act declared that Catholics might hold 
any military office or employment, as its powers could 
not extend out of Ireland, and as all Irish Catholic 
soldiers, sailors and officers were uniformly employed 
on services out of Ireland, it was represented to the 
government that, in order to give it any useful effect 
in this respect, the English act of 1 George I, which 
prohibits Catholics from filling any military situation, 
should be repealed. In answer to their application, the 
Catholics were informed by Lord Hobart that such a 
measure would be immediately adopted, and the letter 
of the secretary of state was shown to them, containing 
the promise of the English government. In the House 

act here inserted, of 33 George III, c. 21. Catholics cannot sit in parliament. 
They cannot vote at elections for members, without taking the oaths of 13 
and 14 George III, c. 35, and of 33 George III, c. 21. They cannot vote at 
vestries, where the question relates to building or repairing churches, the salary 
of the clerk, or the election of churchwarden, by %% 4-33 George III, c. 21. 
They cannot be barristers, attorneys or professors of medicine on Sir P. Dunn's 
foundation, without taking the oaths of 13 and 14 George III, c. 35, and of 33 
George III, c. 21. 

Catholic Soldiers.— By the Mutiny Act, if they refuse to frequent the 
Church of England worship, when ordered to do so by their commanding 
officer, shall, for the first offence, forfeit twelvepence, and for the second not 
only forfeit twelvepence, but be laid in irons for twelve hours ; and by the 
2d section, act 5, of the Articles of War, the punishment extends even to that of 
death. 

No part scarcely, in fact, of the penal code is repealed, but all of it is now 
the law of the land, and in full force against those Catholics who have not 
qualified themselves for relief from its violence, by taking the oaths of 13 and 
14 George III, c. 35, and of 33 George III, c. 21. 



588 Penal Laws 

of Lords, when, upon the debate of this act, Lord 
Farnham proposed an amendment to the clause relating 
to the military officers, by rendering its operation con- 
ditional, until England should pass a similar law, the 
Chancellor, Lord Clare, opposed it: " For," said he, "it 

ff ,could not be supposed that his majesty would appoint a 
man to such a post until the laws of the empire should 
qualify him to act in every part of it. It was more than 
probable a similar law to this would be adopted in 
England before the lapse of two months, and on this 
ground the amendment would be wholly unnecessary." * 
Fourteen years, however, were allowed to pass by 
without any attempt being made to pass such a law in 
England; and when the cabinet, in 1807, sought to 
rescue the plighted faith of their predecessors from 
well-merited reproach, they were accused of an attempt 
to subvert the Established Church, and were driven from 
the councils of his majesty. 

In the course of this year a most unequivocal proof 
was given to the liberal sentiments which prevailed 
throughout among the Protestants of the north of 
Ireland, in regard to their Catholic fellow-countrymen. 
At the meeting of the convention of delegates, which 
was held, in February, at Dungannon, and in which 
the counties of Antrim, Down, Londonderry, Tyrone, 
Donegal and Monaghan, were fully represented, they 
passed resolutions in favor of the absolute necessity of a 
reform in parliament, including the unqualified admission 
of Catholics. The Synod of Ulster also (a body consist- 

> ing of the whole dissenting clergy of the North, and the 
Presbytery of Dublin, together with a lay delegate from 
each parish) presented an address to the lord- lieutenant, 
in which they expressed their satisfaction at the admission 
of the Catholics to the privileges of the constitution. 

* "Plowden's Hist, of Br. Empire, during 1792 and 1739." 



In the Reign of George III 589 

These occurrences are of vast importance in forming- a 
correct view of the opinion of the Irish Protestants upon 
this question, because the Presbyterians being in numbers 
fully equal to the Protestants of the Church of England, 
it leaves but a small number of the whole people adverse 
to the Catholic claims, even if all these Protestants were, 
as they certainly are not, hostile to emancipation. 

During this session another subject occupied the seri- 
ous attention of the upper house of parliament. Dis- 
turbances had broken out, and outrages were committed 
in the county of Louth, and the neighboring counties of 
Meath, Cavan and Monaghan, by persons of the A T ery low- 
est rank in life, associated under the name of Defenders. 
This body had its origin in religious persecution, and 
was an almost inevitable consequence of the system ac- 
cording to which Ulster had been colonized and settled, 
and Ireland ruled since the Reformation. In that pro- 
vince English and Scotch planters had been established 
on the forfeited lands of the native Catholics. 

These last were, for the most part, obliged to retire to 
the bogs and mountains ; but, even there, they were not 
permitted to lose the remembrance of their forefathers, 
their power and their opulence, in the tranquil enjoyment 
of security and content. 

The bogs and mountains afforded them no refuge 
against the acts of uniformity and supremacy, or the ac- 
cumulating oppressions of the Popery laws. Nor were 
the wretched inhabitants exempted by their defenceless 
condition from the hatred, contempt and persecution of 
their privileged and arrogant neighbors. Hence arose 
a mutual rancorous animosity between the new settlers 
and natives, or, in other words, between the Protestants 
and Catholics, transmitted from generation to genera- 
tion, until at last it became more violent and intolerant 
than in any other part of Ireland. 

The Volunteers, by the benign influence of their institu- 



59° Penal Laws 

tion, had, for the first time, considerably abated this spirit, 
and by their successful activity, as military men, in keep- 
ing the peace, had prevented its receiving fresh provo- 
cation by outrage and insult. But in proportion as this 
body declined or was discouraged, prejudices and hatred 
revived, especially in districts remote from the princi- 
pal Presbyterian towns, where the growing liberality of 
the most enlightened dissenters could scarcely operate. 
These prejudices which, chiefly prevailing in the county 
of Armagh,* extended, more or less, into the adjoining 
districts of the counties of Down and Tyrone, began to 
break out in the year 1791. About that period several 
associations among the lower order of the Protestants 
were formed, under the appellation of Peep-o'-Day Boys, 
whose object was to scour the Catholic districts about 
the break of day, and strip the inhabitants of fire- 
arms, alleging that they were warranted in so doing by 
the Popery laws, which had, indeed, for a long period, 
forbidden to the members of that communion the use 
of arms, even for self-defence. 

* Lord Viscount Gosford's address to the magistrates of the county of Armagh: 
" Gentlemen : — Having requested your attendance here this day, it becomes my 
duty to state the grounds upon which I thought it advisable to propose this 
meeting, and, at the same time, to submit to your consideration a plan which 
occurs to me as most likely to check the enormities that have already brought 
disgrace upon this country, and may soon reduce it into deep distress. It is no 
secret that a persecution, accompanied with all the circumstances of ferocious 
cruelty which have, in all ages, distinguished that dreadful calamity, is now 
raging in this county. Neither age nor sex, nor even acknowledged innocence 
as to any guilt in the late disturbances, is sufficient to excite mercy, much less 
to afford protection. 

" The only crime which the wretched objects of this ruthless persecution are 
charged with, is a crime, indeed, of easy proof: it is simply profession of 
the Roman Catholic faith, or an intimate connection with a person professing 
that faith. A lawless banditti have constituted themselves judges of this new 
species of delinquency, and the sentence they have denounced is equally con- 
cise and terrible. It is nothing less than a confiscation of all property, and 
an immediate banishment. It would be extremely painful, and surely unneces- 
sary, to detail the horrors that attend the execution of so rude and tremendous 
a proscription, — a proscription that certainly exceeds, in the comparative number 



In the Reign of George III. 591 

The Catholics, thus exposed and attacked, entered into 
a counter association, called Defenders, which derived its 
name from the necessity of their situation, and its excuse 
from the difficulty, or, as they stated, the impossibility of 
obtaining justice against their aggressors. This associa- 
tion, at first local, and confined, as much as mutual hatred 
would allow, to actual self-defence, began, in 1792, to 
spread through other parts of the kingdom, and not a 
little to connect itself with more general politics. 

In proportion as this association extended itself into 
districts where no Protestants of inferior rank of life were 
to be found, and therefore no outrages like those com- 
mitted by the Peep-o'-Day Boys to be apprehended, it 
gradually lost its characteristic of being a religious feud, 
and became, in fact, an association of the very worst char- 
acters, particularly for procuring a redress of the griev- 
ances of the very humbler classes. Even in the counties 
where it originated, it ceased to be actuated by religious 
animosity before the end of 1792, in consequence of 
the exertions of the early United Irishmen, whose chief 

of those it consigns to ruin and misery, every example that ancient and modern 
history can supply : for, where have we heard, or in what story of human cruel- 
ties have we read of more than half the inhabitants of a populous country 
deprived at one blow of the means, as well as the fruits of their industry, and 
driven, in the midst of an inclement season, to seek a shelter for themselves 
and their helpless families where chance may guide them? This is no ex- 
aggerated picture of the horrid scenes now acting in this country, yet surely it 
is sufficient to awaken sentiments of indignation and compassion in the coldest 
bosoms. Those horrors are now acting with impunity. The spirit of impartial 
justice (without which law is nothing better than an instrument of tyranny^ has 
for a time disappeared in this country, and the supineness of the magistracy 
of Armagh is become a common topic of conversation in every corner of the 
kingdom. 

"It is said, in reply, the Catholics are dangerous. They may be so — they 
may be dangerous from their numbers, and still more dangerous from the un- 
bounded views they have been encouraged to entertain ; but I would venture to 
assert, without fear of contradiction, that these proceedings are not more contrary 
to humanity than they are to sound policy. It is to be lamented that no civil 
magistrate happened to be present with the military detachment on the night of 
the 21st instant ; but I trust the suddenness of the occasion, the unexpected 



59 2 Penal Laws 

endeavors were always directed to reconcile the Protes- 
tants and Catholics. 

These disturbances having attracted the attention of 
the House of Lords early in 1793, a secret committee was 
appointed to inquire into these causes, to endeavor to 
discover their promoters, and to prevent their extension. 

In their report they exculpate the Catholics as a body 
from all criminality with respect to their proceeding's. 
They say that " nothing appeared before them which 
could lead them to believe that the body of the Roman 
Catholics in this kingdom were concerned in promoting or 
countenancing such disturbances;" and then they even 
acquit the lower order of Catholics of being to blame, 
by saying that, "if all the magistrates in the disturbed 
counties had followed the spirited example of the few 
who, much to their honor, exerted themselves with 
vigor and courage to support the laws, the committee 
are persuaded that these disturbances might have been 
suppressed ; but, instead of doing so, they remained 
inactive." 

and instantaneous aggression on the part of the delinquents, will be universally 
admitted as a full vindication of the conduct of the officer, and the party acting 
under his command. Gentlemen, I have the honor to hold a situation in this 
country which calls upon me to deliver my sentiments, and I do it without fear 
and without disguise. I am as true a Protestant as any gentleman in this 
room ; I inherit a property which my family claimed under a Protestant title, and, 
with the blessing of God, I will maintain that title to the utmost of my power. I 
will never consent to make a sacrifice of Protestant ascendancy to Catholic 
claims, with whatever menace they may be urged, or however speciously or 
invidiously supported. Conscious of my sincerity in this public declaration, 
which I do not make unadvisedly, but as the result of mature deliberation, I 
defy the paltry insinuations that malice or party spirit may suggest. 

" I know my own heart, and I would despise myself if, under intimidation, I 
could close my eyes against such scenes as present themselves on every side* 
or my ears against the complaints of a persecuted people. 

" I should be guilty of an unpardonable injustice to the feelings of gentlemen 
here present, were I to say more on this subject. I have now acquitted my- 
self to my conscience and my country, and take the liberty of proposing the 
following resolutions: — 

*' 1st. That it appears to this meeting that the county of Armagh is at this 



In the Reign of George III. 593 

In further corroboration of the innocence of tne Cath- 
olics, there is the following declaration of one of the 
members of the committee, in the debate on the Catholic 
bill. Lord Portarlington said that, " if he was not fully 
convinced that the Catholic body had no connection 
whatever in the disturbances created by some of their 
communion in the North, he should never give this bill 
his support." 

The Catholic clergy, who had been uniformly ready 
to promote tranquillity, and to inculcate the obligatior 
of a strict submission to the laws, were not backward, 
on this occasion, in assisting government to suppress the 
outrages of the Defenders. 

Dr. Troy, Dr. O'Reilly, Dr. Bray, Dr. Bellew and 
Dr. Cruise, all of them titular bishops, happening to be 
in Dublin when the business was first taken up to the 
House of Lords, published the following admonition to 
those of their communion, and directed the priests of 
their dioceses to read it in their respective chapels : — 

moment in a state of uncommon disorder ; that the Roman Catholic inhabitants 
are grievously oppressed by lawless persons unknown, who attack and plunder 
their houses by night, and threaten them with instant destruction, unless they 
immediately abandon their lands and habitations. 

"2d. That a committee of magistrates be appointed to sit on Tuesdays and 
Saturdays in the chapter-room, in the town of Armagh, to receive information 
against all persons of whatever description, who disturb the peace of this 
county. 

" 3d. That the instruction of the whole body of magistrates to their committee 
shall be to use every legal means within their power to stop the progress of 
the persecution now carried on by an ungovernable mob against the Roman 
Catholic inhabitants of this county. 

"4th. That said committee, or any three of them, be empowered to expend 
any sum or sums of money, for information or secret service, out of the fund 
subscribed by the gentlemen of this county. 

" 5th. That a meeting of the whole body of the magistracy be held every second 
Monday, at the house of Mr. Charles McReynolds, in the town of Armagh, to 
hear the report of the committee, and to give such further instructions as the 
exigency of the case may require. 

"6th. That offenders of every description in the present disturbances shall be 
prosecuted out of the fund subscribed by the gentlemen of this county." 



594 Penal Laws 

" Dublin, January 25th, 1793. 
" Dear Christians :— 

It has been our constant practice, as it is our indis- 
pensable duty, to exhort you to manifest, on all occasions, 
that unshaken loyalty to his majesty and obedience to 
the laws which the principles of our holy religion inspire 
and command. This loyalty and obedience have ever 
peculiarly distinguished the Roman Catholics of Ireland. 
We do not conceive a doubt of their being actuated at 
present by the same sentiments, but think it necessary 
to observe that a most lively gratitude to our beloved 
sovereign should render their loyalty and love of order, 
if possible, more conspicuous. Our gracious king, the 
common father of all his people, has, with peculiar energy, 
recommended his faithful Roman Catholic subjects of this 
kingdom to the wisdom and liberality of our enlightened 
parliament. How can we, dear Christians, express our 
heartfelt acknowledgments for this signal and unprece- 
dented instance of royal benevolence and condescension ? 
Words are insufficient ; but your continued and peaceable 
conduct will more effectually proclaim them, and in a man- 
ner equally, if not more, satisfactory and pleasing to his 
majesty and his parliament. Avoid, then, we conjure you, 
dearest brethren, every appearance of riot ; attend to 
your industrious pursuits for the support and comfort of 
your families ; fly from idle assemblies ; abstain from the 
intemperate use of spirituous and intoxicating liquors ; 
practise the duties of our holy religion. This conduct, so 
pleasing to heaven, will also prove the most powerful 
recommendation of your present claims to our amiable 
sovereign, to both houses of parliament, to the magis- 
trates, and to all our well-meaning fellow-subjects of 
every description. None but the evil-minded can rejoice 
in your being concerned in any disturbance. 

" We cannot but declare our utmost and conscien- 



In the Reign of George III 595 

tious detestation and abhorrence of the enormities lately 
committed by seditious and misguided wretches of every 
religious denomination in some counties of this king- 
dom ; they are enemies of God and man, the outcasts of 
society, and a disgrace to Christianity. We consider the 
Roman Catholics amongst them unworthy the appella- 
tion, whether acting from themselves, or seduced to out- 
rage by arts of designing enemies to us and to national 
prosperity, intimately connected with our emancipation. 

" Offer your prayers, dearest brethren, to the Father of 
mercy, that He may inspire these deluded people with 
sentiments becoming Christians and good subjects ; sup- 
plicate the Almighty Ruler and Disposer of empires, by 
whom kings rule, and legislators determine what is just, to 
direct his majesty's councils, and forward his benevolent 
intentions to unite all his Irish subjects in bonds of com- 
mon interest, and common endeavors for the preservation 
of peace and good order, and for every purpose tending 
to increase and secure national prosperity. 

" Beseech the throne of mercy, also, to assist both 
houses of parliament in their important deliberations, 
that they may be distinguished by consummate wisdom 
and liberality, for the advantage of the kingdom, and 
the relief and happiness of his majesty's subjects. 

" Under the pleasing expectations of your cheerful 
compliance with these our earnest solicitations, we most 
sincerely wish you every blessing in this life, and ever- 
lasting happiness in the next, through our Lord Jesus 
Christ. Amen." 

In the summer of 1794, Mr. Pitt formed his memorable 
coalition with the Rockingham party ; and though the 
ground of this transaction was a concurrence of opinion 
concerning the war with France, " if the general man- 
agement and superintendence of Ireland had not been 
offered to the Duke of Portland, that coalition could 



596 Penal Laws 

not have taken place. The sentiments he had enter- 
tained, and the language he had held so publicly for 
years back on the subject, rendered the superintendence 
of Irish affairs a point that could not be dispensed with 
by him." * 

It having thus become a point that could not be 
dispensed with by the Duke of Portland, to grant the 
Catholics of Ireland complete emancipation, the first 
measure of his grace, immediately upon the coalition 
being arranged, was to solicit Lord Fitzwilliam to 
accept of his office of lord-lieutenant, and to propose 
to him to carry this measure instantly into effect, f 
This measure was decided upon by the cabinet on the 
day the Duke of Portland kissed hands, after frequent 
consultations between Mr. Pitt, the Duke of Portland, 
Lord Fitzwilliam, Mr. Grattan and Mr. Ponsonby. % 

Lord Fitzwilliam, having acceded to the pressing 
solicitations of the Duke of Portland to undertake to 
carry this favorite and indispensable measure into effect, 
landed in Dublin on the 2d January. He had consented 
not to bring the question forward on the part of gov- 
ernment, but rather to endeavor to keep it back until a 
period of more general tranquillity ; " but it had been re- 
solved by the cabinet that if the Catholics should appear 
determined to stir the business, and bring it before par- 
liament, then he was to give it a handsome support on 
the part of government." But no sooner was Lord Fitz- 
william landed than he found this determination had 
been taken by the Catholics. 

The Catholics of Dublin had held a meeting on the 23d 
December, and agreed to a petition to parliament, claim- 
ing the repeal of all the penal laws. Similar petitions 
had been agreed to throughout the kingdom, — the natu- 
ral consequences of its being known for some months 

* Letter of Lord Fitzwilliam to Lord Carlisle. t Ibid. \ Ibid. 



In the Reign of George III. 597 

that so steady and strenuous a friend to emancipation 
as the Duke of Portland had become one of his majesty's 
ministers. Lord Fitzwilliam, finding, therefore, that the 
question would force itself upon his immediate consider- 
ation, communicated his opinion and intentions to the 
English government on the third day after his arrival, 
in the following terms: "That, not to grant cheerfully, 
On the part of government, all the Catholics wished for, 
would not ouly be exceedingly impolitic, but perhaps 
dangerous ; that, in doing this, no time was to be lost ; that 
the business would presently be at hand ; and that, if he 
received no very peremptory directions to the contrary, 
he would acquiesce to the wishes of the Catholics." * 

Parliament met on the 22d January, and on the 12th 
February, " no peremptory directions to the contrary 
having arrived," though so much time had elapsed since 
Lord Fitzwilliam had communicated his intentions to the 
English government, Mr. G rattan, with the consent of 
Lord Fitzwilliam, moved for leave to bring in a bill for 
the further relief of the Catholics. 

Meanwhile the English cabinet forgot the stipulations 
which they had entered into with Lord fitzwilliam, 
" that, if the Catholics should appear determined to stir 
the business, and bring it before parliament, he was to 
give it a handsome support on the part of government ;" 
and the Duke of Portland was directed by Mr. Pitt to 
inform Lord Fitzwilliam that, notwithstanding the length 
to which the Irish government had gone, it must retrace 
its steps. 

" Then," says Lord Fitzwilliam, in his letter to Lord 
Carlisle, " it appears to have been discovered that the 
deferring of it would be not merely an expediency, or 
thing to be desired for the present, but the means of 
doing a greater good to the British empire than it has 

* Letter of Lord Fitzwilliam to Lord Carlisle. 



59$ Penal Laws 

been capable of receiving since the Revolution, or at least 
since the Union." 

Lord Fitz william having refused to become a party 
to the inconsistency of Mr. Pitt and the Duke of Port- 
land, that fatal measure of his recall was determined 
upon, — a measure which has involved Ireland in thirty 
years of suffering, under military tyranny, insurrection 
and rebellion, and which, at times, has shaken the stability 
of the empire to its centre. 

Upon a debate in the House of Lords, which took 
place soon after Lord Fitzwilliam's return to England, 
on the subject of his conduct in Ireland, Lord West- 
moreland said, by the direction of Mr. Pitt, " that he 
had no authority whatever from ministers in this country 
for taking the steps which he had' done on the Catholic 
question." The incorrectness, however, of this assertion 
it is no very difficult matter to expose. In the first place 
the measure of emancipation to the Catholics was origi- 
nally the measure of Mr. Pitt and the Westmoreland ad- 
ministration.* " The most strenuous and zealous friends," 
says Lord Fitzwilliam, " of my predecessor claimed the 
credit of it for their patron in terms of the highest com- 
pliment. They did it in the House of Commons, they 
did it in the House of Lords last night. The person 
whom Lord Westmoreland then principally consulted, 
opposed it ; but the open interference of Lord Hobart, 
the avowed determination of the British cabinet, com- 
municated as such to the Catholic agents on the spot, 
through the medium of confidential persons sent over to 
England for that purpose, bore down the opposition. 
The declarations of Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas are well 
known in this country, and are often quoted : they would 
not risk a rebellion in Ireland on such a question." 

Here, then, is evidence which has never been contro- 

* Letter of Lord Fitzwilliam to Lord Carlisle. 



In the Reign of George III. 599 

verted, that, even before Lord Fitzwilliam went to Ireland, 
the measure had been determined upon by Mr. Pitt. 
The only question, therefore, to be decided in judging 
of the correctness of Lord Westmoreland's assertion is, 
whether or not Mr. Pitt had consented that the proper 
time for adopting this measure was arrived when Lord 
Fitzwilliam was sent to Ireland. That he had so consented, 
there is in proof the language which the Duke of 
Portland had held so publicly for years back," that the 
emancipation of the Catholics was indispensably neces- 
sary ; there is the fact of his refusing to coalesce with 
Mr. Pitt unless this measure was conceded ; there are 
the frequent consultations that took place concerning 
it between Mr. Pitt, Lord Fitzwilliam, Mr. Grattan and 
Mr. Ponsonby ; the acceptance, also, of the office of 
lord-lieutenant by Lord Fitzwilliam ; and, finally, the 
word and honor of Lord Fitzwilliam that Mr. Pitt's con- 
sent was absolutely given. 

No event in our history has ever happened that has' 
been attended with more pernicious consequences than 
the decision that Mr. Pitt at this time made to recall Lord 
Fitzwilliam. 

Had he allowed the Catholics to be restored to their 
constitutional rights, they would have secured the peace 
of Ireland, and have afforded every support in their power 
to the government. The contrary policy threw the mass 
of the poorer Catholics into the hands of the United Irish- 
men, involved the country in a civil war, and established 
that succession of disturbances and insurrections which 
have prevailed in Ireland, with little interruption, from 
the year 1795 to the present time. 

When the differences that existed between the lord- 
iieutenant and the English cabinet were known, grief 
and consternation seized ail who had flattered themselves 
that the measures of his excellency's administration were 
to redress the grievances, remove the discontents, and 



600 Penal Laws 

work the salvation of Ireland. In the House of Commons 
Sir Lawrence Parsons moved to limit the money bills to 
two months ; but Lord Milton and Mr. George Ponsonby 
deprecated the measure, and it was rejected. The House 
of Commons, however, unanimously resolved that his 
excellency had, by his conduct since his arrival, merited 
the thanks of the house, and the confidence of the people. 

Out of parliament the discontent was more manifest. 
The Catholics, who had now for six months felt secure 
of being at length relieved from the execrable system of 
pains and penalties, as the Duke of Portland himself was 
accustomed to call it, now saw the cup dashed from their 
lips, and could not but despair of ever seeing any termina- 
tion to the duplicity of English cabinets. The Catholics 
of Dublin, impelled by these feelings, assembled on the 
27th February, and voted a petition to the king for the 
continuance of Lord Fitzwilliam as their chief governor ; 
and those of the whole kingdom followed their example, 
by adopting resolutions and addresses expressive of the 
same sentiments. 

The Protestants, too, assembled extensively, and as 
loudly spoke their indignation at what they condemned 
as ministerial treachery, and considered as a great public 
calamity. The freemen and freeholders of the city of 
Dublin, like the Catholics, agreed to a petition to the 
king. The merchants and traders of the city expressed 
their sorrow at the rumored recall of his excellency, and 
their entire concurrence in the removal of all religious 
disabilities. 

The counties of Kildare, Wexford, Antrim and Lon- 
donderry, followed the example of the freemen and free- 
holders of the capital, and the same sentiments seemed 
to pervade every part of the kingdom. The active 
republicans and the United Irishmen alone were not 
sorry at the agitation and controversies which were 
now springing up. 



In the Reign of George III. 60 1 

These expressions, however, oT dissatisfaction on the 
part of the Irish people were of no avail. Ireland was 
doomed to see a svstem of burning and torture succeed 
a system of conciliation, and Lord Camden was selected 
as a fit person to succeed Lord Fitzwilliam as lord- 
lieutenant. 

The measure of union comes the next in the course of 
events in which the Catholics, as a body, were concerned ; 
and, in strict propriety, it would be right now to proceed 
to show how the Catholics were affected by it. But 
as there have been, and still are, those who, either 
through ignorance or in defiance of all regard for truth, 
assert that the rebellion of 1798 was a Catholic rebellion, 
and that the conduct of the Catholics on that occasion 
afforded a justification for refusing to grant to them such 
concessions, it will contribute to promote a more just 
view of the subject if those facts are referred to, which 
exist, to refute the supposition that the Catholics, as a 
body, were concerned in the rebellion. 

Fortunately for the cause of truth and justice, there 
do exist documents the authority of which no sophistry 
or calumny can impeach. These are the reports of the 
committee of the Irish parliament. They so minutely 
explain the cause, the conduct, and the character of this 
rebellion, and give such accurate information respecting 
those who are concerned in it, that it is impossible for 
any one to affix to it any other character than that which 
they have given to it. The justification, therefore, of the 
Catholics by these reports rests upon this circumstance, 
that to maintain that the rebellion was a Catholic rebellion 
is to dispute the authority of these reports, which make 
no such charge, and account for it by other means. 

The following extracts from the report of the commitee 
of the House of Commons, appointed in 1798 to examine 
the evidence, contain a faithful description of the origin 
and object of this transaction : — 



6o2 Penal Laws 

" The society, under the name of United Irishmen, it 
appears, was established in 1791 ; its founders held forth 
what they termed Catholic emancipation and parliamen- 
tary reform as the ostensible objects of their union ; but 
it clearly appeared from the letter of Theobald Wolfe 
Tone, accompanying- their original constitution, as trans- 
mitted to Belfast for their adoption, that, from its com- 
mencement, the real purpose of those who were at the 
head of the institution was to separate Ireland from Great 
Britain, and to subvert the established constitution of 
this kingdom. In corroboration of which your committee 
have annexed to this report several of their early publica- 
tions, particularly a prospectus of the society, which 
appeared in the beginning of the year 1791, as also the 
plan of reform they recommended to the people. 

" For the first three years their attention was entirely 
directed to the engaging in their society persons of 
activity and talents, in every quarter of the kingdom, 
and in preparing the public mind for their future pur- 
poses, by the circulation of the most seditious publi- 
cations, particularly the works of Mr. Thomas Paine. 
At this time, however, the leaders were rather cautious 
of alarming minds not sufficiently ripe for the adopiion 
of their principles, by the too open disclosure of the real 
objects which they had in view. In 1795 the text of the 
society underwent a striking revision ; the words in the 
amended text stand, ' A full representation of the people,' 
omitting the words, ' In the Commons House of Par- 
liament/ the reason for which has been admitted by 
three members of the executive, examined before your 
committee, to be the better to reconcile reformers and 
republicans in a common exertion to overthrow the 
state. 

" In the summer of 1796 great numbers of persons, 
principally in the province of Ulster, had enrolled them- 
selves in this society. About the same period, as will be 



In the Reign of George III. 603 

more fully explained hereafter, a direct communication 
had been opened by the heads of the party with the enemy, 
and French assistance was solicited, and promised to be 
speedily sent in aid of the disaffected in this kingdom. 

" With a view of being prepared as much as possible to 
cooperate with the enemy then expected, and in order 
to counteract the effect of the armed associations of 
yeomanry, established in October, 1796, directions were 
issued by the leaders to the societies to form themselves 
into military bodies, and to be provided with arms and 
ammunition. 

" These directions were speedily obeyed ; the societies 
assumed a new military form, and it appears by the 
original papers seized at Belfast in the month of April, 
1797, that their numbers at that period, in the province 
of Ulster alone, were stated to amount to nearly one hun- 
dred thousand men ; that they were largely supplied 
with fire-arms and pikes ; that they had some cannon and 
ammunition, and were diligently employed in the study 
of military tactics ; in short, that nothing was neglected 
by the party which could enable them to take the field 
on the arrival of the enemy, % or whenever they might 
receive orders to that effect from their superior officers, 
whom they were bound by oath to obey." 

In the report of the committee of 1797, it appears that 
no part of the kingdom in which the Catholic popula- 
tion prevails was organized, except the counties of West- 
meath and Kildare, and the city of Dublin. These ex- 
tracts establish the following facts: — 

1. That the persons who were the founders of the 
rebellion were those who formed the societies of United 
Irishmen, and who were all Protestants. 

2. That the object of the rebellion was a republican 
form of government and separation from England, and 
not Catholic emancipation, or the establishment of the 
Catholic religion. 



604 Penal Laws 

3. That in May, 1797, no Catholic whatever was con- 
cerned in the rebellion, except some of the lowest orders 
in Dublin, and in the counties of Westmeath and Kil- 
dare ; and, 

4. That one hundred thousand Protestants were, in 
May, 1797, completely organized for open rebellion, and 
well supplied with arms. 

Now, as we learn from the evidence of Mr. McNevin, 
before the committee of the House of Lords, in 1798, 
that the leaders of the measure had determined to com- 
mence operations in 1797, let us suppose the rebellion had 
then broken out, and ask this question, Would it have 
been a Catholic rebellion ? Certainly not. No man could 
venture to maintain an opinion so utterly untenable. 
Then, if the rebellion, had it broken out in 1797, would 
have been a rebellion of Protestants, and not one of 
Catholics, how could it become a Catholic rebellion in 
1798? Let us again refer to the report of the secret 
committee. This gives an accurate account of the pro- 
gress of the rebellion during the year 1797, and shows 
by what means, and by whom, the deluded Catholic 
peasantry of the South wer # e made parties to the treason : 

" It appears to your committee that the leaders of 
the treason, apprehensive lest the enemy might be dis- 
couraged from any further plan of invasion by the loyal 
disposition manifested throughout Munster and Con- 
naught (the two great Catholic provinces) on their for- 
mer attempt (by Hoche, in December, 1796), determined 
to direct all their exertions to the propagation of the 
system in those provinces which had hitherto been but 
partially infected. With this view, emissaries were sent 
into the South and West in great numbers, of whose 
success in forming new societies, and administering the 
oaths of the union, there were, in the course of a few 
months, but too evident proofs, in the introduction of 
the same disturbances and enormities into Munster 



In the Reign of George III 605 

with which the northern province had been so severely 
visited. 

" In order to engage the peasantry in the southern 
counties, particularly in the counties of Waterford and 
Cork, the more eagerly to their cause, the United Irish- 
men found it expedient, in urging their general principles, 
to dwell with peculiar energy on the supposed oppres- 
siveness of tithes (which had been the pretext for the 
old Whiteboy insurrections) ; and it is observable that, 
in addition to the acts of violence usually resorted to by 
the party for the furtherance of their purposes, the 
ancient practice of burning the corn and houghing the 
cattle of those against whom their resentment was 
directed, was revived, and very generally practised in 
those counties. 

" With a view to excite the resentment of the Cath- 
olics, and to turn their resentment to the purpose of the 
party, fabricated and false texts were presented, as having 
been taken to exterminate Catholics, and were industri- 
ously disseminated by emissaries of the treason through- 
out the provinces of Leinster, Munster and Connaught. 
Reports were frequently circulated amongst the ignorant 
of the Catholic persuasion, that large bodies of men 
were coming to put them to death. This fabrication, 
however extravagant, was one among the many wicked 
means by which the deluded peasantry were engaged 
the more readily in the treason. 

" The measures thus adopted by the party * completely 
succeeded in detaching the minds of the lower classes 
from their usual habits and pursuits, insomuch that, in 
the course of the autumn and winter, 1797, the peasantry, 
in the midland and southern counties, were sworn and 
ripe for insurrection." 

From this account of the progress of the treason in 
1797, in the South of Ireland, the following inferences 

* The Protestant United Irishmen. 



606 Penal Laws 

may be deduced: ist, that the Catholics of Ireland 
were unconnected with the system of rebellion which 
had extended over the whole of the Protestant province 
of Ulster ; 2d, that the peasantry of the South were cor- 
rupted by emissaries sent amongst them by the leaders 
of the treason in the North, and not by the Catholic 
clergy or Catholic aristocracy; and, 3d, that the organi- 
zation of the South was not a distinct effort of a distinct 
body of people, but a measure subsidiary to the original 
organization of the Protestants of the North, conducted 
by the same party, and having the same object in con- 
templation. 

Then it follows that the leaders of the rebellion, being 
the same in 1798 as they were in 1797, the object of it 
the same in 1798 as it was in 1797, the means for carry- 
ing it into effect in 1798 the same as the means for carry- 
ing it into effect in 1797, there can be no more grounds 
for calling it a Catholic rebellion in 1798 than there were 
for calling it a Catholic rebellion in 1797 ; and, therefore, 
as there were no grounds for affixing this character to it 
in 1797, neither are there any for calling it a Catholic 
rebellion in 1798. 

In direct contradiction, however, of such a conclusion, 
and of the statements of the secret committee, it has been 
asserted by those who are interested in calumniating the 
character of the Irish rebellion, and believed by those 
who are ignorant of its true nature, that it was a Catholic 
rebellion ; that the designs of the Catholic body went 
to the massacre and destruction of every Protestant in 
Ireland, and that all their other plans were wholly sub- 
servient to that of establishing the Catholic religion.* 

* These are the propositions which Sir Richard Musgrave has labored to 
maintain. His work professes to do that which the secret committee of the 
House of Commons was appointed to do, namely : to give a faithful account of 
this rebellion. A discerning public will at once see to which authority they 
ought to give a preference Sir Richard dedicated his first edition to Lord 



In the Reign of George III. 607 

As to the conduct of the Catholic clergy of the county 
of Wexford, it is well known " that not one of them who 
had a flock, not one parish priest was implicated, or had 
any concern in fomenting, encouraging or aiding the 
rebellion ; nay, it is certain that they abhorred and 
detested and shuddered at it as the most wicked, 
scandalous, and abominable event that they had ever 
witnessed."* 

The supposition that the establishment of the Cath- 
olic religion was one of the objects of this rebellion, is 
proved to be unfounded by the evidence of the princi- 
pal leaders, Emmett and McNeiven. 

The following are their answers, given before the 
committee, to the question, " Whether or not they would 
set up the Catholic religion ?" 

McNeiven. — " I would no more consent to that than to 
the establishment of Mahometanism." 

Emmett. — " I do not think the Catholics would wish to 
set up a Catholic establishment, even at the present day. 
Perhaps some old priests, who have long groaned under 
the penal laws, might wish for a retribution to them- 
selves, but 1 do not think the young priests wish for 
it ; and I am convinced the laity would not submit to it, 

Cornwallis. Upon reading it, however, Lord Cornwallis directed his secretary 
to write the following letter to him : 

"Dublin, March 24, 1801. 

" Sir : — I am directed by the lord-lieutenant to express to you his concern 
at its appearing that your late publication of the ' History of the Rebellions 
of Ireland' has been dedicated to him by permission. 

' ' Had his excellency been apprised of the contents and nature of the work, he 
would nsver have lent the sanction of his name to a book which tends so 
strongly to revive the dreadful animosities which have so long distracted this 
country, and which it is the duty of every good subject to endeavor to compose. 

" His excellency, therefore, desires me to request that, in any future edition 
of the book, the permission to dedicate it to him may be omitted. 

" I have, etc., 

«E. LITTLE HALES." 

* See "Dr. Caulfield's Reply to Sir R. Musgrave/' sold by Keating & Co., 
Duke Street. 



6o8 Penal Laws 

and that the objections to it will be every day gaming 
strength." 

Only two circumstances more remain to be taken notice 
of regarding the conduct of the Catholics, as a body, in 
this rebellion. One of them, the indisputable fact, that 
of the twenty-four leaders of the rebellion who were 
banished to Fort St. George, only four of them were 
Catholics, twelve were of the Church of England, and 
the remaining eight were Dissenters. Well indeed, then t 
might Mr. Pitt say, in the House of Commons, in 1805, 
whose opinion is the other circumstance alluded to : "I 
do not consider the late rebellion in Ireland to have been 
a Catholic rebellion."* 

Facts, reason and authority, therefore, it appears, all 
coincide in the condemnation of the calumny which 
a few blind and mistaken men have had just talent 
enough to propagate amongst the ignorant and pre- 
judiced. The magna vis veritalis will, however, prevail 
on this, as well as upon all other occasions, and sooner 
or later bring forward the unfortunate and much-injured 
Catholics of Ireland to the view of their English fellow- 
subjects as highly deserving of their confidence and 
their affection. 

The next great event belonging to the Catholic ques- 
tion is the measure of Union, not as having, in any way, 
altered the political condition of the Catholics in respect 
to the penal laws, but as a measure concerning which a 
compact was virtually entered into between them and 
the English government. For, though it is true that no 
regular articles like those of Limerick can be produced 
to prove this compact, still there is circumstantial evi- 
dence of such a nature as is sufficient to bring conviction 
to every candid mind that, on the one hand, the Cath- 
olics did agree to support the Union, and, on the others 
that the English government, on their part, did indi- 

* "Debates on the Catholic Petition." 



In the Reign of George III. 609 

rectly agree to secure to them, in consideration of that 
support, the measure of emancipation. 

This evidence is to be collected, 1st, from the speech 
of Mr. Pitt, on proposing the Union articles to the House 
of Commons ; 2dly, from the act of Union ; 3dly, from Mr, 
Pitt's speech, and his letters and those of Lord Cornwallis 
concerning the change of administration in 1801. 

First, Mr. Pitt's speech: — "I am well aware," says 
Mr. Pitt, " that the subject of religious distinction is a 
dangerous and delicate topic, especially when applied to 
a country such as Ireland, the situation of which, in this 
respect, is different from every other. When the estab- 
lished religion of the state is the same as the general 
religion of the empire, and where the property of the 
country is in the hands of a comparatively small number 
of persons professing that religion, while the religion of 
a great majority of the people is different, it is not easy 
to say, on general principles, what system of church 
establishment, in such a country, would be free from dif- 
ficulty and inconvenience. By many I know it will be 
contended that the religion professed by the majority of 
the people would at least be entitled to an equality of 
privileges. I have heard such an argument urged in this 
house ; but those who apply it, without qualification, 
to the case of Ireland, forget, surely, the principles on 
which English interest and English connection have been 
established in that country, and its present legislature 
is formed. No man can say that, in the present state of 
things, and while Ireland remains a separate kingdom, 
full concessions could be made to the Catholics without 
endangering the state, and shaking the constitution to 
its centre." 

Is not this as much as to say that, after an incorpo- 
rate union shall'have taken place, these full concessions 
could be made without endangering Ireland ? Could 
these words be understood in any other way by the 



610 Penal Laws 

Catholics? Are they not an indirect offer, on the part of 
Mr. Pitt, to the Catholics, to make these full concessions, 
provided they would enable him to make them with- 
out endangering the state? But the language which he 
next employs is stronger and still more in point. He im- 
mediately proceeds : " On the other hand, without anti- 
cipating the discussion, or the propriety of agitating the 
question, or saying how soon or how late it may be fit to 
discuss it, two propositions are indisputable: jst. When 
the conduct of the Catholics shall be such as to make it 
safe for the government to admit them to the participa- 
tion of the privileges granted to those of the established 
religion, and when the temper of the times shall be 
favorable to such a measure, — when those events take 
place, it is obvious that such a question may be agitated 
in an united imperial parliament with greater safety than 
it could be in a separate legislature. In the second place, 
I think it certain that, even for whatever period it may 
be thought necessary, after the Union, to withhold from 
the Catholics the enjoyment of those advantages, many of 
the objections which at present arise out of their situation 
would be removed if the Protestant legislature were no 
longer separate and local, but general and impartial." 

The speech from which the foregoing is extracted was 
circulated gratis, by government, throughout Ireland. 
It was considered by the Catholics as a tender of eman- 
cipation ; it was anxiously read by all who could read ; 
at the Castle it was explained to those who sought for 
explanation, as an unequivocal offer of every conces- 
sion ; and, in the result, the Catholics opposed their own 
parliament, and gave their support to Mr. Pitt, and, by 
the aid of this support, he was enabled to contend with 
a majority in the House of Commons, and finally to carry 
the measure. 

We come now to the evidence to be collected from the 
act of Union. 



In the Reign of George III. 6n 

Many of the leading Catholics have not hesitated 
to declare that the oath prescribed by this act to 
qualify members of parliament to take their seats, was 
framed under an arrangement that, immediately after the 
measure was passed, the}^ were to enjoy the privilege of 
sitting in parliament. The act runs thus: " That every 
one of the Lords and Commons of parliament of the 
United Kingdom, and every member of the House of 
Commons of the United Kingdom, in the first and every 
succeeding parliament shall, until the parliament of the 
United Kingdom shall otherwise provide, take the oath 
as now enjoined to be taken." " Do not quibble with us," 
the Catholics say, " concerning terms and formalities ; 
it was clearly understood between us that, ii we cooper- 
ated to bring about the Union, as we actually did, you 
would effect the emancipation. To give a coloring to 
this engagement, you inserted in the articles of union 
an intimation of a proposed change of the oaths in our 
favor, when, behold! now you roundly tell us that this 
alteration never shall take place, and that we must make 
up our minds to wear our shackles till the end of time." 

The third head of evidence is Mr. Pitt's speech, on ex- 
plaining the cause of his resignation, in 1801 : " As to the 
merits," Mr. Pitt said, " ol the question which led to my 
resignation, I am willing to submit them to the house. 
I and some of my colleagues in office did feel it an in- 
cumbent duty upon us to propose a measure on the part 
of government which, under the circumstances of the 
union so happily effected between the two countries, we 
thought of great public importance, and necessary to 
complete the benefits likely to result from that measure. 
We felt this opinion so strongly that, when we met with 
circumstances which rendered it impossible for us to 
propose it as a measure of government, we felt it equally 
inconsistent with our duty and our honor any longer to 
remain a part of that government. What may be the 



612 Penal Laws 

opinion of others, I know not; but I beg to have it un- 
derstood to be a measure which, if I had remained in 
government, I must have proposed." * 

Why must Mr. Pitt have proposed this measure ? To 
this question one answer alone can be given : because 
his honor, as a statesman, was substantially engaged to 
the Catholics that, if they supported the Union, he would 
propose emancipation. 

We now come to the written communications which, 
at this time, were made to the Catholics by Mr. Pitt 
and Lord Cornwallis, and which were given by Lord 
Castlereagh to Dr. Troy. 

Mr. Pitt to Lord Cornwallis:— 

" The leading part of his majesty's ministers, find- 
ing insurmountable obstacles to the bringing forward 
measures of concession to the Catholic body whilst in 
office, have felt it impossible to continue in administra- 
tion under the inability to propose it, with the circum- 
stances necessary to carrying the measure with all its 
advantages, and they have retired from his majesty's 
service, considering this line of conduct as most likely 
to contribute to its ultimate success. 

" The Catholic body will therefore see how much 
their future hopes must depend upon strengthening 
their cause by good conduct in the meantime ; they will 
prudently consider their prospects as arising from the 
persons who now espouse their interests, and compare 
them with those which they could look to from any 
other quarter; they may with confidence rely on the 
zealous support of all those who retire, and of many 
who remain in office, when it can be given with a pros- 
pect of success. They may be assured that Mr. Pitt 
will do his utmost to establish their cause in the public 
favor, and prepare the way for their finally attaining 
their objects ; and the Catholics will feel that, as Mr. Pitt 

* " Debrett's Debates," 14 and 161. 



In the Reign of George III 613 

could not concur in a hopeless attempt to force it now, 
he must at all times repress, with the same decision 
as if he held an adverse opinion, any unconstitutional 
conduct in the Catholic body. 

'* Under these circumstances, it cannot be doubted that 
the Catholics will take the most loyal, dutiful and patient 
line of conduct ; that they will not suffer themselves to be 
led into measures which can, by any construction, give 
a handle to the opposers of their wishes either to mis- 
interpret their principles, or to raise an argument for 
resisting their claims ; but that, by their prudent and ex- 
emplary demeanor, they will afford additional grounds to 
the growing number of their advocates to enforce their 
claims on proper occasions, until their objects can be 
finally and advantageously attained." 

The sentiments of a sincere friend {i. e., Marquis of 
Cornwallis) to the Catholic claims : — 

" If the Catholics should now proceed to violence, or 
entertain any ideas of gaining their object by conclusive 
measures, or forming associations with men of Jacobinical 
principles, they must of course lose the support and aid 
of those who have sacrificed their own situations in their 
cause, but who would, at the same time, feel it to be 
their indispensable duty to oppose everything tending to 
confusion. 

" On the other hand, should the Catholics be sensible 
of the benefit they possess by having so many characters 
of eminence pledged not to embark in the service of 
government except on the terms of the Catholic privi- 
leges being obtained, it is to be hoped that, on balancing 
the advantages and disadvantages of their situation, they 
would prefer a quiet and peaceable demeanor to any line 
of conduct of an opposite description." 

The originals of these two declarations were handed 
to Dr. Troy, and afterward to Lord Fingal, by the Mar- 
quis of Cornwallis. His excellency desired they should 



614 Penal Laws 

be discreetly communicated to the bishops and principal 
Catholics, but not inserted in the newspapers. They 
appeared, nevertheless, in the English prints soon after- 
ward, and were copied into the Irish papers. 

Under circumstances such as these, is it surprising that 
the Catholics should now feel that faith has been broken 
with them by the government of England? 

Mr. Pitt, so long ago as in Lord Westmoreland's admin- 
istration, had made no hesitation to say, in such a manner 
that his sentiments might be known to the Catholics, that 
he would not risk a rebellion by withholding emancipa- 
tion. In 1795 he sent Lord Fitzwilliam to Ireland, to carry 
this measure into effect; and in 1799 he held forth, in 
language not to be misunderstood, this measure as the 
reward which he would give the Catholics for their sup- 
port to the Union. 

At this time he had governed England for fourteen 
years ; he was supported by great majorities in parlia- 
ment, and he possessed the unbounded confidence of the 
king and of the people. What other construction could 
his language on the Union bear among the Catholics than 
that of a positive engagement, on the part of England, to 
give them emancipation, provided they gave the Union, 
in the first instant, their support? No one can say that 
they formed their expectations that this measure would 
be conceded to them, without good grounds for doing 
so ; and there being good grounds, no correct moralist 
can maintain that England made no such engagement. 

Having now traced the history of the penal laws and 
the Catholics from the Treaty of Limerick down to the 
Union, it remains only to make a conclusion of this work, 
by collecting the several inferences which may be drawn 
from the facts contained in it. 

In the first place, the Catholics have to complain of 
two distinct breaches of faith by the government of 
England : 1st, in the violation of the Treaty of Limerick; 



In the Reign of George III. 615 

and, 2dly, in the treatment which they have received 
since the Union. 

Secondly. — They have to complain of having endured 
a greater share of insult and of oppression than it ever 
was the lot of any people, in any other country, to be 
exposed to. 

Thirdly. — They have it in their power to repel all 
those charges that have been made against them of being 
disloyal to the House of Brunswick: 1st, by their con- 
duct in 1715; 2dly, by their conduct in 1745; 3<dly, by 
their conduct in 1798. 

Fourthly. — They have it in their power to show that 
their clergy have at all times inculcated sound doctrines 
of morality, of peace and submission to the government, 
and of brotherly affection for their Protestant fellow- 
countrymen. 

Fifthly. — They can prove that their religious principles 
have been wholly misunderstood, and that these prin- 
ciples are not, in any degree, repugnant to their duty 
as loyal subjects.* 

Sixthly. — This very important inference may be drawn 
from what has already been stated, namely : that for a 
long period of time there has prevailed amongst the 
Protestants of Ireland a very general inclination to 
concede to the Catholics a participation with them in 
constitutional privileges. 

And lastly. — When we consider the effects, direct and 
collateral, of such a penal code as has existed in Ireland, 
it is not too much to say that it may be laid down as 
incontrovertibly proved that it is to the penal code 
England has to look as the source of all the alarm she 
now entertains for the safety of Ireland ; and to England 
Ireland has to look for the cause of all the misery and 
degradation which, at this day even, peculiarly mark her 
character among the nations of the world. 

* Note c. 



616 Penal Laws 

We shall conclude this history of the penal laws with 
stating- what the opinions are, concerning them and the 
Catholic religion, of men entitled to the highest public 
veneration for their great authority as divines and 
statesmen. 

The following is the testimony of an Irish Protestant 
Bishop of Down, in 1647:* 

" To this antiquity of doctrine," he says, " is annexed 
an uninterrupted succession of their bishops from the 
apostles, and particularly of their supreme bishop, St. 
Peter, whose personal prerogatives were so great; and 
the advantageous manner in which many eminent prelates 
of other sees have expressed themselves with regard to 
the Church of Rome. This prerogative includes the 
advantages ol monarchy, and the constant benefits which 
are derived from that form of government. 

" Nor does the multitude and variety of people who 
are of this persuasion, their apparent consent with elder 
ages, and their agreement with one another, form a less 
presumption in their favor. The same conclusion must 
be inferred from the differences which have arisen 
amongst their adversaries; the casualties which have 
happened to many of them ; the oblique and sinister 
proceedings of some who have left their communion. 

" To these negative arguments the Catholics add those 
of a more positive kind : the beauty and splendor of the 
Church of Rome, her solemn service, the stateliness and 
magnificence of her hierarchy, and the name of' Catholic,' 
which she claims as her own due, and to concern no 
other sect of Christianity. It has been their happiness to 
be instrumental to the conversion of many nations. The 
world is witness to the piety and austerity of their 
religious orders, to the single life of their priests and 
bishops, the severity of their fasts and observances, the 
great reputation of many of their clergy for faith and 

* Dr. Jeremy Taylor. 



In the Reign of George III. 617 

sanctity, and the known holiness of some of those per- 
sons whose institutes the religious orders follow."* 

Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, perhaps the most emi- 
nent lawyer of modern times, treated the incapacities 
and disabilities which affected Catholics as penalties of 
the severest nature. 

In the memorable conference between the Houses of 
Peers and Commons of England respecting the occa- 
sional conformity bill, the managers of the former house 
(amongst whom was the great Lord Somers) solemnly 
declared " that an honest man cannot be reduced to a 
more unhappy condition than to be put, by law, under 
an incapacity of serving his prince and his country, and 
that, therefore, nothing but a crime of the most detest- 
able nature ought to put him under such a disability." 

" The Irish," says Dr. Johnson, " are in a most unnatural 
state, for there we see the minority prevailing over the 
majority. There is no instance, even in the ten persecu- 
tions, of such severity as that which has been exercised 
over the Catholics of Ireland." 

Dr. Law, Bishop of Elphin, in his speech in the Irish 
House of Lords on the Catholic Bill of 1793, delivered 
the following opinion: " He felt it his duty to declare 
fully his sentiments on these points, because he looked 
upon his Roman Catholic brethren as fellow-subjects and 
fellow-Christians, believers in the same God, and part- 
ners in the same redemption. Speculative differences in 
some points of faith from him were of no account; they 
and he had but one religion, — the religion of Christianity. 
Therefore, as children of the same Father, as travellers 
on the same road, and seekers of the same salvation, why 
not love each other as brothers? It was no part of Pro- 
testantism to persecute Catholics ; and without justice 
to the Catholics, there could be no security for the Pro- 
testant establishment." 

* " Statement of Penal Laws," p. 136. 



618 Penal Laws 

Dr. Watson, Bishop of Llandaff, in a publication entitled 
"A Speech Intended to be Spoken," dated November 
23d, 1803, says:— 

" If any one should contend that this is not the time 
for government to make concessions to Ireland, I wish 
him to consider whether there is any time in which it is 
improper for either individuals or nations to do justice ; 
any season improper for extinguishing animosity ; any 
occasion more suitable than the present for putting an 
end to heartburnings and internal discontent." 

" It has been asserted," says Archdeacon Paley, " that 
discordancy of religions is enough to render men unfit 
to act together in public stations. But upon what argu- 
ment or upon what experience is this assertion founded ? 
I perceive no reason why men of different religious 
persuasions may not sit upon the same bench, deliberate 
in the same council, or fight in the same ranks, as well as 
men of various or opposite opinions upon any contro- 
verted topic of natural philosophy, history, or ethics. 

" Why should not the legislator direct his text against 
political principles which he wishes to exclude, rather 
than encounter them through the medium of religious 
tenets? Why should a man, for example, be required to 
renounce Transubstantiation before he is admitted to an 
office in the state, when it might seem to be sufficient 
that lie abjures the Pretender?" 

" When, in addition to these great authorities, the 
names of Wyndham, Sheridan, Burke, Pitt and Fox can be 
added as strenuous advocates for the repeal of these 
penal laws, can any man be warranted in entertaining a 
doubt of the policy of admitting the Catholic subjects of 
these countries into a full enjoyment of the rights and 
privileges of the constitution? Can any man be justified 
in believing that the constitution will be changed, or that 
the Protestant Church and Protestant succession to the 
crown will be exposed to danger ? The constitution rests 



In the Reign of George 1IL 619 

upon the foundation of every subject of the king having 
an interest in protecting it ; in every subject being in 
possession of full security for his person, and his property 
and his liberty, against all invasions, whether of arbitrary 
power or popular outrage. This principle of universal 
admission into the rights of the constitution makes the 
principle of its preservation universal ; and every excep- 
tion of it, in place of securing a safeguard, creates a real 
danger. And for any man at this time gravely to say 
that the oath of supremacy, the declaration against Tran- 
substantiation and the sacramental test, are the bulwarks 
of the constitution, is a matter to excite surprise, and can 
only be accounted for, either by an unpardonable igno- 
rance of those things that every one may easily learn, 
or by the sinister influence of some private interest." * 

*ParnelL 



FATHER NICHOLAS SHEEHY. 

1776 

From the petty tyranny which had at all times driven 
the peasantry to band together in illegal associations, from 
the rack-rent and the persecution of the tithe-proctors — in 
short, from that spirit of natural and universal resistance 
to injustice and oppression, sprang the terrible organiza- 
tion known as the Whiteboys, which caused such terror 
in Tipperary and Limerick, and the south of Ireland 
generally, in the course of the last and present centuries. 
They fairly overran the country at night, dressed in 
white shirts, from which they took their name; levelled 
the fences with which the landlords had enclosed the 
public commons for their own use; dug up the fields 
which had been sown in grass, and from which, most 
likely, some of the Whiteboys had been themselves 
ejected ; cut down trees, and carried on such an inces- 
sant, harrassing war of destruction, that the landlords 
were encouraged to increase their already abundant 
means of persecution, and this they did with terrible 
effect. 

In order, in the first place, to secure the aid of govern- 
ment and the sympathy of those in high places, the 
landlords sought and found a host of witnesses ready at 
any time to swear to the existence of a treasonable con- 
spiracy for the restoration of the Stuarts and the Catholic 
religion. In the next place, they proposed to strike terror 
at once to the hearts of the disaffected people, by wreak- 
ing desperate vengeance on some of the faithful, sel^-sacri- 
ficing clergy. 



Father Nicholas Shcehy. 621 

Their plots succeeded admirably well ; for the Earl 
of Drogheda, with the forces under his command, was 
ordered to Clogheen, county Tipperary, to act in con- 
junction with the Protestant magistrates and gentlemen, 
who, thus strengthened and encouraged, proceeded to 
carry out their programme, selecting as their victim the 
Rev. Nicholas Sheehy. 

This good priest was just such a man as wins the 
utmost respect and love of the true Irish heart. He was 
warm and generous in disposition, destitute of every 
thought of self; full of sympathetic charity for the flock 
of over-awed, poverty-stricken, down-trodden people 
among whom he had chosen to cast his lot, pitying their 
affliction, relieving by every means in his power their 
actual distress, while fatigue and time, humiliation and 
insult, were of no account in his estimation, when it was a 
question of softening the wrath or staying the persecu- 
tion of their oppressors. He was a man of bold heart, 
one to whom the sense of fear seemed unknown, as the 
petty tyrants themselves seemed to acknowledge by their 
combined and inhuman thirst for his death. Yet in his 
case, as in that of every true Catholic priest persecuted 
under one or another political pretext, the blindness of 
those who fight against the Lord is most manifest. Had 
it not been for the noble and incessant exertions of the 
Catholic clergy, who made use of their vast influence 
over their flocks to curb and control, or at least restrain, 
the unhappy inclination to rebellion which seems inherent 
in human nature, especial^ against illegal and ill-used 
authority, there is but little doubt that the whole fair 
island would have become one vast arena of violence 
and anarchy : for the Catholic people were fairly driven 
to understand that they had absolutely naught to hope 
from their heartless rulers. They saw their priests 
accused of rebellion and treasonable teachings, when, time 
and again, they well knew how strenuously those same 



622 Martyrs and Confessors. 

priests had not only coaxed and urged, but threatened 
with the terrible judgments of the Church, all those who 
were inclined to take the vengeance of the Lord into 
their own hands against their oppressors. They had 
heard their fathers tell, the memories of their own infancy 
recalled, and now their own manhood witnessed, the 
scorn, the ignominy, the diabolical treatment to which 
priest after priest and bishop after bishop were exposed, 
and from which, for their sake, these martyrs of the 
living God never flinched. 

Such a man was Father Sheehy, a native of Tipperary, 
but educated in France, because the laws of Christian 
England forbade a Catholic gentleman to educate his 
children in the faith of his fathers. Even after his return 
to his native land, he was for a time compelled to offer 
the Holy Sacrifice and administer the consolations of 
religion secretly, because the number of priests who 
began to be tolerated was limited by law, and could not 
be increased without certain punishment. Already had 
he been several times within the grasp of the law, yet 
managed each time to escape conviction, when his ap- 
pointment to the regular mission at Clogheen, and, later, 
to the united parishes of Shandraghan, Ballysheehan and 
Templeheny, brought him somewhat under the protec- 
tion of the law, but still more under the eye of his bitter 
enemies, the Orange magistrates and landowners of the 
county. These men, among whom were Sir Thomas 
Maude, John and William Bagwell, Bumbury, Toler 
(worthy ancestor of the notorious Lord Norbury), and 
John Hewitson, Rector of Clogheen, irritated by his undis- 
guised opposition to their unjust taxation and crushing 
intolerance, formed a close alliance for his destruction or, 
rather, murder. 

After one or another trumped-up charge against him 
had been in vain essayed, they succeeded in having him 
indicted on the charge of aiding and abetting in the 



Father Nicholas Shechy. 623 

murder of one John Bridge, a poor half-simpleton, whom 
intimidation had induced to turn informer against the 
Whiteboys. Bound over to appear for their prosecution 
at the coming assizes, Bridge suddenly disappeared, and 
the enemies of Father Sheehy seized the opportunity 
to accuse him of complicity in the supposed or pretended 
murder of John Bridge. Here was a rare chance; and 
no trouble was spared, nor expense, in manufacturing a 
body of witnesses who would swear away the priest's 
life for a few paltry guineas, or to gratify some personal 
spite. Parson Hewitson was eminently successful in 
getting such ; and by promises and bribes succeeded in 
enlisting in his service a disreputable woman named 
Mary Bradly, alias " Moll Dunlea," whom Father Sheehy 
had expelled from his chapel for her wicked, immoral life ; 
one Toohey, a noted horse-thief, who was brought out 
of the jail of Kilkenny for this purpose; and a vagabond 
strolling boy, named Lonergan. On the information of 
these immaculate witnesses, a warrant was issued for the 
arrest of the priest, and .£300 offered for his apprehension. 

Father Sheehy, knowing full well that, if he were 
brought to trial at Clonmel, he had not the least chance 
of escape from his relentless enemies, concealed himself 
for several months, and was even sheltered by several 
Protestants, particularly by a farmer named Griffith, at 
Shandraghan. After much suffering and many escapes, 
Father Sheehy wrote a letter to Secretary Waite at 
Dublin Castle, offering to surrender, on condition that 
he should be tried in Dublin ; stating that, so bitter were 
the Tipperary magistrates against him, he could not have 
a fair trial at Clonmel. 

His offer was accepted. Father Sheehy at' once deliv- 
ered himself up to Mr. O'Callaghan, a just magistrate, 
and ancestor of the present Lord Donoghmore, who not 
only received him kindly, but sent to Clogheen for a 
troop of horse to escort him to Dublin, fearing to deliver 



624 Martyrs and Confessors. 

him to the Orange constables, whom his brother magis- 
trates had in their service. 

Once escaped from the clutches of his enemies, his 
natural goodness of heart and his frank affability of man- 
ner failed not to produce their effect on those about him. 
He was first lodged with the provost, in the lower castle- 
yard ; but, after a cursory examination, his innocence was 
so apparent to Mr. Secretary Waite (already prepos- 
sessed in his favor by his letter of capitulation, so to 
speak) and to Town-Major Sirr,* that he was at once 
freed from all restraint, and permitted to go anywhere 
within the city limits. Major Sirr went so far as to 
become security for his appearance at the approaching 
trial. 

" I will never believe," said the good-natured town- 
major, " that such a man as he is guilty of the crimes laid to 
his charge. I have had some experience of those over- 
zealous worthies in the South, who trump up plots thick 
and fast to keep their hands full of business ; and I swear 
to you (of course it goes no further) that in nine cases out 
of ten it is they who deserve trial, and not the poor 
miserable devils of countrymen whom they goad to mad- 
ness with their oppressions and exactions. But that is 
not our affair ; it is for the judges to look after that. 
This priest, however, must not be kept in prison, for I 
see his innocence as plain as I see your face. So I'll be 
his security for appearing when called on ; let him out 
on my responsibility." 

" Agreed ! " was Waite's answer; and Father Sheehy 
was speedily informed that, until such time as his trial 
came on, he was at liberty to go where he pleased, pro- 
vided he did not quit the precincts of Dublin city. 

His word of honor was then taken that he would 

* This Major Sirr was father to him who exercised such wanton cruelty on 
the noble but unfortunate Lord Edward Fitzgerald, — a striking verification, 
surely, of the old proverb that many a good father has a bad son. 



Father Nicholas Sheehy. 625 

appear when called, and, with many expressions of heart- 
felt gratitude to the high-minded gentlemen who had dealt 

so generously by him, he withdrew, almost a free man. 
** * * * » ■# *• ■* 

Nearly eleven months had passed away before Father 
Sheehy was brought up for trial, the case being put back 
from time to time under one pretence or another. During 
all that long period he had been supplied with funds by 
his friends in the country, whom he had the comfort* 
moreover, of seeing from time to time, and especially his 
favorite cousin, Martin O'Brien, who, in fact, remained 
almost constantly with him. 

On the 10th of February, 1766, he was arraigned at the 
bar of the Court of Queen's Bench, before Chief-Justice 
Gore and Judges Robinson and Scott. 

It is remarkable that in this trial he was accused of 
only treasonable practices, and not for the murder of 
Bridge. The charge was a serious one, no doubt, and 
even the stoutest heart might well have quailed under 
the circumstances, but Father Sheehy looked with a smil- 
ing countenance on the imposing array of white-wigged 
lawyers, the earnest-looking occupants of the jury-box, 
as they crowded forward to see the prisoner; nay, even 
the grave and awful dignity of the three judges failed to 
blanch his cheek or to dim his eye. That cheek had 
much of the freshness of youth, and that clear, blue eye 
was full of life and spirit, while his fine aquiline nose 
gave token of the decision which marked his character. 
The trial went on, evidence on both sides was sifted to 
the bottom, and it is but fair to say (what respectable 
historians have already said) that the whole proceedings 
were marked by the strictest impartiality. Several hours 
were occupied in the examination of the witnesses, and 
very often, as some glaring inconsistency was discovered 
in the evidence for the prosecution, or some shameless 
bribery was brought to light, Town-Major Sirr, who sat 



626 Martyrs and Confessors. 

near the judges, would address a whispered remark to 
the gentleman who sat next to him. Throughout the 
whole trial the judges treated the Tipperary dignitaries 
with something very like contempt, to the great discom- 
fiture of those ultra-loyal persons; and when, at seven 
o'clock in the evening, Chief-Justice Gore rose to ad- 
dress the jury, he said it gave him no ordinary pleasure 
to assure them that the court was unanimous in declaring 
Mr. Sheehy innocent of the charge brought against him. 
The jury retired, and very soon returned to their box with 
a verdict of " Not guilty." No sooner was the word pro- 
nounced than one wild, enthusiastic cheer rang out from 
hall and gallery, and was caught up by the multitude 
without. Father Sheehy manifested not the smallest 
change of countenance, but stood leaning against the 
railing of the dock, with folded arms and head slightly 
raised in the attitude of listening. 

But the drama was not yet concluded — the chief-jus- 
tice arose to address the prisoner. 

At that moment Father Sheehy looked toward one of 
his chief opponents, who had come all the way from 
the neighborhood of Clogheen to be present at the trial, 
and he saw on his face an exulting smile which boded 
him no good. His eye wandered on to the chief-justice, 
and he was convinced that there was something more to 
come, for the face of the judge had undergone a serious 
change. After a momentary pause he said : '- The jury, as 
I expected, has acquitted you of the charges contained 
in the indictment, and by this time you should have 
been free, had not a fresh obstacle presented itself, — one, 
too, involving the most serious consequences." He 
paused a moment, and then exchanged a few words in a 
low voice with the other two judges: a deathlike quiet 
pervaded the court, — the silence of intense anxiety and 
expectation. All eyes were turned on the priest ; his 
head had fallen on his chest, and he seemed lost in thought, 



Father Nicholas Sheeky. 627 

but no shadow of fear was seen on his face. The judge 
spoke again, and Father Sheehj raised his head to listen : 
" Nicholas Sheehy, it is now my painful duty to remand 
you to prison : you are charged with being accessory to 
the wilful and deliberate murder of John Bridge!" At 
these words a shudder ran through the assembly, whilst 
a cry of horror escaped from almost every individual 
present. All eyes were now turned on the unfortu- 
nate prisoner, who was evidently doomed to undergo 
every species of persecution, and to be deprived of all 
chance of escape. He was pale, but his eye was still un- 
dimmed, though a tear was evidently forcing its way. 
After a moment of silence he bowed low to the chief- 
justice, and then to each of the other two judges, and 
lastly to the jury. 

" My Lord Chief-Justice," he said at length, " this 
new accusation, terrible as it is, does not at all surprise 
me. Knowing the men from whom it comes, and their 
persevering enmity toward me, I had every reason to 
expect that they would be prepared to follow up my ac- 
quittal here— if acquitted I should be — with some other 
charge. Such a charge as this, no one who knows me 
could have anticipated ; but God's will be done ! I 
accept this grievous humiliation as coming from His 
paternal hand, and will only pray Him to turn the hearts 
of those who persecute me. I am thankful to this 
worshipful court, my lord, and to the gentlemen of the 
jury, for the impartiality with which my trial has been 
conducted, and will ever pray that the righteous Judge 
of all may deal mercifully by those who have not shrunk 
from doing justice to an oppressed and persecuted man. 
I am now ready to submit to whatever fate awaits me, 
always declaring that, if John Bridge were indeed mur- 
dered — which God forbid ! — I have had neither act or part 
in, nor knowledge of, that execrable deed. I am well 
aware that this declaration avails nothing before a court 



628 Martyrs and Confessors. 

of justice, but I owe it to my reputation as a man, and 
still more as a priest of the Most High God : and that 
God, who seeth the heart, knoweth I do not prevaricate. 
I have done, my lords!" 

" Mr. Sheehy," replied the humane chief-justice, " it 
is not for me to express an opinion of any sort in this 
matter ; but this I will say, that I have seldom performed 
a more painful duty than that of remanding you to prison. 
Mr. Sheriff," he added, addressing that functionary, "you 
will take the prisoner at the bar again into custody, until 
such time as he may be brought up for trial." 

The officer bowed, so did the prisoner; but a shout ot 
execration arose from the multitude within and without 
the building. " A plot ! a plot !" was the general cry, and 
a violent commotion was seen to agitate the crowd. 
Father Sheehy, before leaving the dock, turned toward 
the multitude and made a warning gesture with his hand. 
Speech was not allowed him, but the people understood 
his desires, anc^ showed their respect for him by the pro- 
found silence which followed, — a silence which was only 
broken by a murmur of pity and indignation. If any 
were present who believed him guilty of this new crime, 
they took good care to conceal their opinion, for not one 
dissenting voice was heard in the place. 

Hardly had the prisoner quitted the dock, and the 
judges withdrawn from the bench, when the fierce shout 
was heard: " A groan for Maude, Hewitson and Bagwell, 
the priest-hunting, bloodthirsty magistrates of Clogheen ! 
There goes one of them, boys: let him hear how well the 
Dublin lads can hoot such rascals!" The groan, or rather 
series of groans and hisses which followed, made Bag- 
well right glad to escape to his carriage, which was in 
waiting, while his black heart overflowed with venom 
to hear the wild and oft-renewed cheer which ascended 
from many thousand voices at the mention of Father 
Sheehy's name. And again and again the cry arose of, 



Father Nicholas Sheehy, 629 

" Sheehy forever! down with the Tipperary magis- 
trates! " until Bagwell thought it would never cease, or 
that he could never get fast enough out of hearing, 
" But we'll have our revenge for this," was his con- 
soling reflection, — " by the soul of King William, but 
we'll have our day, and a black day it will be for him, 
the Popish villain ; that's as sure as my name is John 
Bagwell. His Dublin mob shan't save him ; no, by 

h , nor this white-livered Gore, if he was again sitting 

in judgment ; but he shan't, for we'll lose a fall for it, or 
we'll have him brought to Clonmel. This trying the 
fellow in Dublin will never do, and 1 knew that all aiong." 

Bagwell had his revenge, for he succeeded in having 
Father Sheehy sent back to Clonmel for trial ; and in 
order to heap indignities upon him, on his way back, his 
hands were manacled, and his feet tied under the horse's 
body, so that the cords sank into the very flesh to the 
bones. 

It was night when he entered Clonmel, and it was by 
torchlight that he passed those gloomy gates which 
were to him the portals of fate. They closed behind 
him, and as the echo died away along the dreary walls, a 
cold shiver darted through all his body, and for the first 
time in his life his heart sank within him, for he felt as 
though the icy hand of death were already grasping 
him, and the warm, living world was shut out forever. 
But his depression was only momentary. " Why should 
I despair? " he said to himself. " The) 7 cannot deprive me 
of heaven unless through my own fault ; and the greater 
•my sufferings and humiliations here, the greater will be 
my reward hereafter, provided God gives me the grace 
to sanctify them by consecrating all entirely to Him. 
Courage, my soul ! heaven lies beyond the dark portals 
of death ; let us not shrink from the passage, since Christ 
Himself has set us the example. He died, then why 
should we fear to die?" 



630 Martyrs and Confessors. 

His reflections were cut short by the jailer, who 
roughly bade him follow ; and he was very soon the ten- 
ant of a cold, damp cell, on the first floor of the prison. 
Again did his heart sink; but he quickly shook off his 
despondency, and betook himself to prayer. 

No sooner was his arrival in Clonmel made known 
than the whole country was thrown into a feverish ex- 
citement. Some were rejoiced, — that is to say, the few 
who lived in the hopes of seeing the Catholic party 
entirely prostrated, and the Protestant ascendancy per- 
manently established ; but by the great mass of the 
people the event was hailed with all the wildness of lam- 
entation. It is very questionable if any one individual there 
really believed Father Sheehy cognizant of Bridge's 
murder, if murdered he indeed was ; but it is quite certain 
that many affected to believe it. 

But the priest was not alone in this new misfortune, 
for it was the policy of the ruling party to get rid of the 
most influential Catholics, either by fair or foul means ; 
and the disappearance of Bridge, the crown witness, was 
a glorious opportunity for involving many of them in one 
common ruin. 

On the 1 2th of March, 1766, he was brought to trial at 
Clonmel, with Edward Meehan, or Meighan, of Grange, 
charged with the murder of John Bridge, at Shanbally, on 
the 28th of October, 1764. So great was the terror in 
which the Tipperary magistrates were held, that he 
could not get a lawyer to take up his case, except a 
Dublin attorney named Sparrow, who knew little of its 
merits, or of the character of the priest's enemies, and 
who had to steal out of town at night, owing to the threats 
of the Orange faction. 

Toohey, who had been brought out. of jail to swear 
away the life of the priest, stated that he was present 
with a party of Whiteboys when Sheehy tendered an oath 



Father Nicholas Sheehy, 631 

to Bridge, binding him to deny his information at the 
coming trial ; that Bridge refused to take it, and then one 
Pierce Byrne struck at him with a stone, and Edmund 
Meehan struck him with a billhook on the head, killing 
him instantly ; that Father Sheehy then swore all present 
to keep the murder secret, and to be true to the King of 
France ; that the body was then removed two miles from 
the scene of the murder, and interred in a lonely place. 

The boy Lonergan swore that he met the party on 
their way to bury the body, and that Father Sheehy 
gave him three half-crowns not to inform on them. 

Moll Duniea was the next witness, and, as she had an 
old spite against the priest for hunting her out of the 
parish on account of her debauchery, she did some strong 
swearing. 

She swore that she lived with her mother at Clogheen ; 
that Michael Kearney was at their house, and that, the 
night of the murder, Father Sheehy called for him ; that 
she followed them to Shanbally, when she saw them 
and Ned Meehan, Thomas Magrath, and others, carrying 
the dead body of Bridge, which they buried at a place 
called Baron ; that she was also present when the body 
was removed from there, and buried at Ballysheehan ; 
that on both occasions the priest swore all present to 
secrecy. 

The above is the leading testimony upon which sev- 
eral persons were hanged. Is there anything more im- 
probable than that a body of men contemplating murder 
would let a notorious thief and scoundrel, a strolling boy 
and an unprincipled prostitute, into the secret? 

iVnn Hullan, Moll Dunlea's mother, swore that Moll 
slept in the same bed with her the night of the murder, 
and several nights before and after ; and that Michael 
Kearney was not in their house that year at all. 

George Flannery, Thomas Gorman, Harry Keating 
and others, proved that Michael Kearney had left the 



632 Martyrs and Confessors, 

country before the time of the murder ; and a farmer 
named Hendrekin swore that Edmund Meehan spent, in 
his house, the entire night on which it was said Bridge 
was killed. 

In any other country but Ireland such an impeach- 
ment of the prosecutors would immediately acquit the 
prisoners, but the ascendanc}^ party had the judge and 
jury in their hands, and were resolved to hang their vic- 
tims. Father Sheehy had several respectable witnesses 
to testify in his behalf; but his relentless enemies laid 
snares for them, and had some arrested as Whiteboys, 
and others for murder. 

A Mr. Herbert, a respectable farmer, was arrested on 
the charge of being a Whiteboy, on his way to court, and 
was so terrified by threats of execution, that he subse- 
quently turned a witness for the prosecution. 

Mr. Keating, of Tubrid, a highly respectable Catholic 
gentleman, testified that, during the entire night of the 
supposed murder, Father Sheehy was in his house at 
Tubrid, and could not have left it without his knowledge. 
At this stage of the proceedings, Parson Hewitson arose 
in court, with a paper in his hand, and said : " I find in 
this list Mr. Keating's name among those concerned in the 
late murder of a serjeant and a corporal at Newmarket." 
Mr. Keating was at once removed and committed to jail, 
and his testimony expunged.* 

This ruse showed how well the magistrates had laid 
their devilish plots, and struck terror into several in 
court who might have given important evidence, but 
who saw that, by so doing, they would get themselves 
flung into jail, without doing any good to the doomed 
priest. 

* Mr. Keating succeeded in having his trial removed to Kilkenny, out of 
reach of the Tipperary Orange magistrates, and was honorably acquitted. The 
jury scouted the evidence brought against him, which was partly the same as 
convicted Father Sheehy. 



Father Nicholas Sheehy. 633 

The high-sheriff of the county, Daniel Toler, ancestor 
of the notorious and bloody Lord Norbury, made himself 
very active in intimidating witnesses from appearing on 
behalf of the prisoners. 

Father Sheehy saw how deeply the plot had been laid 
for his ruin, and as he saw Mr. Keating removed a 
prisoner from the witness-stand, he knew that his fate 
was sealed. 

It availed little that several witnesses proved that they 
had seen Bridge after the night on which it was said he 
had been murdered, and that he stated to them that he 
was about leaving the country for good, in order to avoid 
swearing at the trials of some Whiteboys.* 

All this availed little, for the jury found Edmund 
Meehan guilty of the murder of John Bridge, and the 
same jury found Nicholas Sheehy guilty of the murder 
of John Bridge ; that is to say, as having aided and 
abetted Edmund Meehan therein. f 



* " It is strange that there was nothing said about the body of Bridge during 
the trial. The impression at the time, and which still exists in Tipperary, 
was. that Bridge had fled the country to avoid both the Orange faction, who 
were using him as an informer, and the Whiteboys, whom he feared on 
account of his testimony against them. It is also stated that he was after- 
ward identified by several parties in St. John, Newfoundland. On the 
other hand, Major Sirr of Dublin Castle, father of the notorious Major Sirr of 
1798, held a letter purporting to be from Father Sheehy, in which he stated that 
Bridge had been killed, but that he knew nothing of the murder until a dying 
man accused himself of the crime. Though Dr. Curry, Dr. Egan, and other 
eminent authorities, accept this letter as genuine, we doubt it, and look on it 
as a forgery, for, if the witnesses saw Bridge murdered, and saw. the body 
buried, as they testified, they could have pointed out the place to the authorities, 
who would, most certainly, have made the most of such strong proof in their 
favor; but the fact is, neither the body nor the grave was ever found. 
Furthermore, Father Sheehy's reply to the judge confirms the belief that the 
document was a forgery, concocted to mitigate the atrocity of Father Sheehy's 
foul murder." 

f It is a remarkable fact that not one of the jurors who tried Father Sheehy 
died by a natural death. Sir Thomas Maude died a raving maniac crying out 
that Father Sheehy was dragging him down to hell. Bagwell, of Kilmore, 
became an idiot ; and his eldest son shot himself in a packet, on his way to 



634 Martyrs and Confessors. 

Again was the voice of wailing, loud and deep, heard 
echoing through the building ; sighs and loud groans 
gave note that many a heart, even in that packed assem- 
blage, sympathized with the unfortunate victim of injus- 
tice. But the prisoner himself only raised his eyes to 
heaven and said : " Even this, my God ! even this can I 
bear — all things whatsoever Thou wilt, whether they be 
good or evil. So long as Thou keep me in the state of 
grace, I can cheerfully submit to Thy holy will." 

On the following morning the prisoners were brought 
up for sentence. Poor Meehan received his death-sen- 
tence with great composure, but the sobs and cries of 
his aged father and distracted wife were pitiful to hear. 
Father Sheehy was then brought forward. 

" Nicholas Sheehy," said the judge, " have you any 
reason to offer why sentence of death should not be 
passed upon you ?" 

"My good lord," said the priest, with a simple earnest- 
ness of manner that touched every heart not steeled by 
prejudice, — " my good lord, I am aware that your ques- 
tion is a mere form, and anything I could say would have 
no effect ; still, as the opportunity is afforded me, I must 
say that I am entirely innocent of the crime — the heinous 
crime — of which I have been convicted. Not only am I 

England, and that branch of the family soon became extinct. Jacob was 
seized with fits, in which he barked like a dog, and could scarcely be kept from 
eating the flesh off himself. Cork, of Kiltinan, was drowned. Parson 
Hewitson died suddenly. Barker had no heir, and died in fits. Tuthill cut 
his throat. Another juror, named Shaw, was choked to death. Alexander 
Hoops was drowned. Ferris died mad. Another dropped dead at his own door. 
Another died in a privy. Dunviil was killed by his horse. Minchin died in 
beggary. The Pennefeather family was reduced to poverty, and mnny of them 
died idiots. The Barker and Jacob families are also extinct, in a direct line. 
The same might be said of the families of nearly all the jurors who tried 
Father Sheehy. Though I cannot give the fate of each of the jurors, it is 
remarkable that a curse seemed to blight each and every one of them, and 
even their descendants. 

To finish the catalogue : Moll Dunlea was killed by falling into a cellar, in 
Cork, while drunk; Lonergan died of a loathsome disease, in Dublin; and 



Father Nicholas Sheehy. 635 

innocent thereof, but, to the best of my belief, no such 
murder has been committed. 1 am almost fully persuaded 
that this very John Bridge is still living, for we have the 
clearest evidence that, some days subsequent to the date 
of the supposed murder, the man was seen alive and in 
good health, and took leave of his friends, to go either tc 
Cork or Kinsale, to embark for some foreign country." 
Here he was interrupted by the judge, who desired him 
to confine himself to his own case. " My Lord, it appears 
to me that I speak to the purpose ; surely I do when my- 
self and another are to be put to death for a crime which 
never was committed by any one. Knowing, or at least 
believing, this to be the case, I protest against the entire 
proceedings, as regards Meehan and myself, and will pro- 
test until my latest moment against the shameful injustice, 
the gross perjury, the deadly malice, of which we are 
the victims. In conclusion, I must declare that, notwith- 
standing all this, I bear these unhappy men who perse- 
cute me even to death, not the slightest ill-will : I leave 
them in the hands of a just God, knowing that He will 
deal with them according to their deserts. That is all I 
have to say. I leave God to distinguish between the 
innocent and the guilty. " 

Toohey died of the leprosy. On the other hand, the descendants of Mr. 
Callaghan, who showed justice and mercy to the poor, persecuted priest, have 
become nobles in the land. 

The following verses, taken from an old Irish song, allude to the fate of 
Father Sheehy's jury, and were attributed to his sister, who went half crazy, 
and watched his head for twenty years, until it was given up to her : — 

" And where are they, dear head, that once reviled thee ? 
Who spiked thee high, and with filthy pitch defiled thee ? 
All prayers for pity spurn'd, scoffd and slighted, 
They crushed my head, and left me old and blighted. 
Sure of their doom, some died in madness, yelling 
Of Sheehy's quartered corpse, of hell's dark dwelling ; 
And some, O righteous God ! impious and daring, 
Pour'd forth their cursed lives, and died despairing." 



636 Martyrs and Confessors, 

The judge, after a few remarks, passed sentence in the 
following words: — 

" You shall be hanged, drawn and quartered, on Satur- 
day next, the 15th inst.; and may God have mercy on 
your soul, and grant you a sight of the enormity of your 
crime ! " 

" I thank your lordship for your good wishes," replied 
the poor priest. " Doubtless I have much to answer for 
before God, since we are all sinful creatures at the very 
best ; but He knows that of this crime, or aught like unto 
it, I am wholly innocent. To His justice I fearlessly and 
with all confidence give myself up. Praise, however, 
and glory to His holy name, now and for evermore ; and 
may His will be done on earth as it is in heaven ! " 

Here the long-restrained feelings of Father Sheehy's 
friends burst forth anew. Sighs and groans, and half- 
stifled exclamations of horror and pity were heard on 
every side, and it required all the authority of the judge 
to restore anything like order. In the midst of the 
tumult the prisoner was removed, and, very soon after, the 
court adjourned till the following day. 

During the short interval between the sentence and 
its execution, nothing could equal the excitement of the 
public mind. People of all classes felt themselves deeply 
interested. The Catholics, of course, were filled with in- 
dignation ; for the trial and conviction of Father Sheehy 
and Meehan had outraged every sense of justice, being 
the very climax of shameless corruption, and a direct 
violation of all law, human and divine. There were few 
men of his day so popular as Father Sheehy, and the 
people seemed everywhere to regard him as the victim 
of his high-souled generosity and undisguised sympathy 
with them in their sufferings. It required, indeed, all the 
influence of the priests to keep them from pouring into 
Clonmel and attacking the jail. 

In their ardent attachment to Father Sheehy they 



Father Nicholas Sheehy. 6$~ 

utterly lost sight of their own safety, and would have 
rushed on certain destruction, without even a chance of 
saving the doomed victim of religious intolerance and 
political hatred. The jail was constantly surrounded by 
a strong military force ; some of Lord Drogheda's troops 
having been brought from Clogheen to reenforce the 
garrison. 

By a great stretch of favor, his own immediate family 
were permitted to see him, and also Father Doyle, as his 
spiritual director. His demeanor was calm during all 
those mournful days, and he even succeeded in cheer- 
ing and consoling his afflicted relatives by his glowing 
descriptions of the joy which awaits the blessed in the 
other world,— in that world whither he was hastening. 
He studiously diverted their minds from the violent 
death which awaited him, and dwelt on the joy of being 
released from the miseries of this life, and of putting on 
the robes of immortality: " And then," said he, " as for 
the dark stain which will rest on my character, even that 
need not distress you, my kind friends ; for I feel assured 
that the all-righteous God will clear up this fearful 
mystery and show forth my innocence and that of poor 
Meehan. On this head I have no fears." 

It was the day before that appointed for his execution, 
and Father Sheehy had just parted with his two sisters 
and some other dear friends, of whom he begged that 
they would not ask to see him on the following day : 
" For," said he, " as I am to-morrow to appear before my 
God, I would rather be left to undisturbed preparation. 
Let none of you come near me, then, for I would fain 
break asunder, of my own free will, those bonds of 
earthly affection, — those 'cords of Adam ' which death 
will rend to-morrow. Go now, my sisters ; and may God 
bless you and yours, and guide you safe into the port 
of salvation ! For shame, for shame ! why weep so bit- 
terly ? Why one would think you had but little of the 



638 Martyrs and Confessors. 

Christian's hope. Do you not know and feel that we 
will meet again, probably very soon, in that heaven where 
our divine Master lives to welcome our coming ? Only 
keep your last end continually in view, so as to avoid 
sin, as much as in you lies, and I will venture to predict 
a happy meeting for us all ; knowing that the God whom 
we serve delights in showing mercy to the contrite 
sinner. Farewell ; be of good cheer, and forget not to 
pray for me when I am gone hence." So saying, betook 
the hand of each, and held them a moment, while, with 
eyes raised to heaven, he invoked a blessing on their 
heads, and again exhorted them to be of good heart: to 
which they replied only by a doleful shake of the head 
and a fresh burst of tears. 

Martin O'Brien just then came in, and Father Sheehy 
said to him : " When I shall have suffered the extreme 
penalty of the law, you will bury all of this poor body 
that you may obtain, in the old churchyard of Shan- 
draghan. It is not, to be sure, where you would wish to 
lay my remains, but I bespoke my lodging there some 
months ago. You will make my grave close to that old 
vault, under the shade of a gnarled elm which overhangs 
the spot. Tell Billy Griffith that his noble protection 
of a poor persecuted priest will be remembered, even in 
heaven, if I am so happy as to reach there, and that my 
blessing rests, and shall rest, upon him and his children. 
You will also give him this watch (it was a large, old- 
fashioned silver one): it is the only treasure I possess on 
earth, and I would fain send that excellent friend a token 
of my gratitude. Tell him to keep it for my sake : it is 
all 1 have to give him. To you, Thomas Burke, I give 
this silver snuff-box ; and do you, Terence, keep this little 
ivory crucifix," drawing forth one which he wore on his 
neck ; " but your legacy is only reversional, my dear 
fellow," he added with a melancholy smile, " for you 
are not to have it until after my death. Then you are to 



Father Nicholas Sheehy. 639 

take possession ; but I have worn it for many a year, and 
I cannot part with it while life remains. For you, 
Martin, I have reserved my beads, which I value very 
highly, for they were given me, when life was warm and 
young within me, by one of the professors in Louvain. 
My breviary, and a few other books, I have given to 
Father Doyle ; and so I have already bequeathed all my 
effects : my body to Shandraghan, and my soul to God, 
if He will deign to accept the offering. Not a word 
now, not a word now ! " he said, seeing that some of 
his listeners were about to speak. " I'll not have a word 
spoken with such a doleful face as that. O'Brien," he 
suddenly added, " we little thought of this as we walked 
along, looking down on the black, muddy Lififey. I 
know not what you may have thought, but for myself 
I can safely say that I never dreamed of such an end." 

" Truly I must say, Father Nicholas," interrupted 
Martin, " that I have always had a misgiving on my 
mind, ever since I heard the report of Bridge's murder. 
That report is the unfortunate cause of this dreadful 
catastrophe." 

" Not at all, Martin, not at all," replied the priest, 
briskly ; " the cause lies farther back, and may be traced 
to the active part I took in getting the church-rates 
knocked off in a parish where they ought never to have 
been paid, seeing that it contained not a single Protestant, 
and then in encouraging my people to resist that novel 
and most unjust marriage-tax. These are the first causes ; 
this pretended murder of Bridge is but an adjunct of the 
main scheme, for, if his disappearance had not furnished 
a weapon against me, they would have found another. 
My only grief is for poor Keating. God knows what is 
to become of him and this unfortunate Meehan, who 
leaves so many helpless mourners behind him ; but I 
trust God will provide for them, since He sees fit to 
deprive them of their main support." 



640 Martyrs and Confessors. 

" With regard to Mr. Keating," interposed Burke, " I 
hear he has been sent to Kilkenny jail, so that he will 
not be tried here. " 

" Thank God for that same ! " exclaimed Father Sheehy, 
with fervor. " He has, then, a much better chance of 
escape : I am truly rejoiced to hear that he is not to be 
tried in Clonmel. Should any of you ever see him again, 
tell him how anxious 1 was about him, and that my 
prayers were continually offered up in his behalf, that 
God might reward his goodness, even in this life, by 
delivering him from the hands of his enemies. You, 
Martin O'Brien, will pay a visit, as soon as possible after 
to-morrow, to Mr. Cornelius O'Callaghan, and thank him' 
for his kind and respectful treatment of me. Tell him 
how deeply grateful I was, and that I remembered his 
disinterested kindness to the last moment of my exist- 
ence. I believe this is all," and he looked around with 
a pleased expression of countenance. " My worldly affairs 
are now arranged ; and I am at full liberty to attend to 
' the one thing needful : ' my final preparation for eternity. 
Father Doyle promised to come back this evening, and I 
hope to receive the adorable sacrament to-morrow morn- 
ing for my viaticum. So now, my dear friends, you will 
leave me to myself awhile ; my soul must needs prepare 
to meet the Bridegroom, and secure His approbation 
before He ascends the tribunal of judgment. God be 
with you till we meet again ! " He then shook the hand 
of each in turn, and they quitted the prison in silent 
anguish. 

On Saturday, the fifteenth of the month, Father Sheehy 
was brought out from his cell to undergo the murderous 
punishment. He was attended by his faithful friend and 
spiritual director, Father Doyle ; and of the two, the latter 
showed far more dejection than the prisoner — the felon. 
They came out on the platform in front of Clonmel jail, 
and there stood side by side, while one loud, long shout 



Father Nicholas Sheehy. 641 

of sorrowful greeting arose from the assembled multi 
tude. Sighs and groans were heard on every side, and 
many a convulsive sob from the bosom of brave and 
stout-hearted men. 

Father Sheehy 's eyes filled with tears as he advanced 
to the front of the platform, and raising his right hand, he 
made the sisfn of the cross over the heads of the crowd 
below. " May the Almighty God, before whose judg- 
ment-seat I am about to appear, bless and protect you all, 
and may He grant to each of you the graces of which you 
stand most in need ! May He preserve you steadfastly 
in the true faith, by which alone salvation is to be ob- 
tained ! I need scarcely tell you, my good people, that I die 
entirely innocent of the foul crime laid to my charge. As 
for those who have persecuted me, even to death, and. the 
jury who condemned me on such evidence, I forgive and 
pity them all, and would not change places with any of 
them for all the riches of the earth. The care of my repu- 
tation I leave to my God : He will reestablish it in His 
own good time. In conclusion, I pray you all to retire 
quietly to your homes, and make no disturbance, for that 
would only give a pretext for fresh persecution." 

He then shook hands with the priest, and begged to 
be remembered in his prayers; then calmly turned and 
made a signal to the hangman. That functionary was 
prompt in his obedience: a moment, and the body of 
Father Sheehy swung in the air; another, and he had 
ceased to breathe. The pain of death was passed : 
heaven in mercy had made it but momentary ; and the 
wild scream that arose from the multitude below, loud 
and heart-piercing as it was, rolled away unheard by 
him, and mingled with the boisterous wind that filled 
the air around. 

" May the Lord God of hosts have mercy on your 
soul, Nicholas Sheehy!" exclaimed Father Doyle, loud 
enough to be heard by the people in the street ; " He 



642 Martyrs and Confessors. 

will not refuse you that justice which your fellow-men 
withheld from you. A melancholy death was yours, but 
your soul has, I trust, found favor before God, for you 
were, indeed, free from guile." 

All, however, was not yet over. The body of the 
martyred priest was cut down, and taken away to under- 
go the remainder of the sentence. Hanging was not enough 
for the brutal spirit of the Protestant ascendancy ; the 
poor, lifeless frame was to be drazvn and quartered, and, 
while the task was being accomplished, Edward Meehan 
was brought out on the platform. He, too, declared his 
innocence in the most positive terms, and offered up an 
affecting prayer for those who had sworn away his life, 
for the jury who had condemned him on their false 
testimony, and for the judge who had passed sentence 
upon him. He also repeated his solemn declaration of 
Father Sheehy's innocence. 

" Though I know," said he, "that he is already gone 
where I am soon to follow, but still it is right to speak 
the truth to the very last. That good priest has been put 
to death wrongfully ; and when they did it to him, that 
was God's own servant, they may well do it to me, poor 
sinful man that I am, though, thanks to the great God, 
1 am as innocent of this murder as the child unborn. 
That is ail I have to say, only that I freely forgive all 
my enemies, and pray God to have mercy on my soul, 
and the Blessed Virgin and all the saints to pra}' for me, 
and for them I leave behind." 

He was launched into eternity almost before the words 
were uttered : no, not quite so soon, for his sufferings 
were somewhat longer than those of the priest ; lor two 
or three minutes he struggled in the agon)- of his violent 
death, and then all was still. 

The Catholics who had occasion to pass that way 
about an hour before sunset, hurried on with a shudder, 
and murmured, " Lord, have mercy on him!" as they 



Father Nicholas Sheehy. 643 

glanced at the strange and ghastly spectacle over the 
arched porch of the old jail, where was hoisted, on a 
pole, the severed head of the ill-fated priest, the well- 
known features little changed, were it not for the un- 
natural purple hue diffused over all : the natural effect of 
the fearful death which had parted soul and body. 

The murder of Father Sheehy did not appease the 
Orange landlords. In the following month his cousin, 
Ned Sheehy ; a respectable farmer, James Buxton, and 
James Farrell, were also tried for the murder of Bridge, 
for swearing Toohey to be true to Shaun Meskill (a name 
given to the Whiteboys, after one of their leaders) and 
his children, and other charges. The swearing against 
them was reckless and savage, being the same as hung 
the priest. They were, of course, sentenced to death, and 
executed at Clogheen. When their heads were chopped 
off, a young girl, named Ann Mary Butler, snatched up 
the head of Ned Sheehy, and made off with it. 

The sympathizing soldiers made way for her and closed 
upon the hangman, who pursued her. The head was 
decently interred with the body, while the other two 
were spiked at Clonmel. These men declared, just be- 
fore their execution, that they were offered their liberty 
by the Rev. Lawrence Broderick, Rev. John Hewitson, 
Sir William Barker's son, Matthew Bumbury, Bagnell, 
Toler, and Bagnall, if they would swear against Bishop 
Creagh, Lord Dunboyne's brother, Robert Keating, 
several other gentlemen, and some priests, charging them 
w 7 ith being engaged in a conspiracy with the French 
government to raise an insurrection in Ireland; but, 
above all, if they would declare that Father Sheehy 
was sfiiiltv, and that he " had died with a lie in his 
mouth." These brave men withstood all, and died with 
remarkable fortitude, declaring their innocence to the 
last. Ned Sheehy was the grandfather of the cele- 
brated Countess of Blessington, one of his daughters 



644 Martyrs and Confessors. 

being" married to Edmund Power of Curragheen. Just 
twenty years afterward, in 1786, Father Sheeh)^s sister 
was allowed to take away his head, and inter it with his 
body in Shandraghan graveyard. 

Beside the ruins of the old church repose the remains 
of Father Sheehy. A beaten path leads to the grave, 
for many a pilgrim has trod over it. The white head- 
stone that marks this hallowed spot bears the following 
inscription : — 

" Here lieth the remains of the Rev. Nicholas Sheehy, 
parish priest of Shandraghan, Ballysheehan and Tem- 
pleheny. He died March 15th, 1766, aged 38 years. 
Erected by his sister, Catherine Burke, alias Sheehy." 



FATHER FLORENCE O'MOELCHONRY.* 

A. D. 1629. 

Most Rev. Florence O'Moelchonry, or Conroy, Archbishop of Tuam, and 
Founder of the College of St. Anthony of Padua, at Louvain. — Father Dona- 
tus Mooney. Provincial of Ireland, and first Guardian of St. Anthony's. — 
Father Bonaventure Hussey. 

Ireland owes no small debt of gratitude to those 
self-sacrificing men who, during the first half of the 
seventeenth century, devoted their lives to illustrate 
her annals, and gather together the scattered frag- 
ments of her early history. Throughout Elizabeth's 
reign, ruin and desolation had fallen upon that king- 
dom ; its monasteries were destroyed, its schools pro- 
scribed, its clergy persecuted, its most fertile districts 
reduced to a desert waste, and nothing was left undone 
to seize upon or destroy every monument of its ancient 
glory. Some of the agents of this reckless vandalism 
were impelled by irreligious fury, for thus they imag- 
ined they might turn away our devoted people from 
the long-cherished faith of their fathers; others were 
led on by the delusive hope that the national spirit of 
Ireland would cease when the monuments of her early 
fame were obliterated and forgotten. " It seemed to 
you " (thus writes Michael O'Clery, the chief of the 
Four Masters, when dedicating his work to the O'Gara 
of Coolavin, in 1636), — " it seemed to you a cause of pity 
and regret, grief and sorrow, for the glory of God and 
the honor of Ireland, how much the race of Gaedhal 

* "Irish Ecclesiastical Record." 



646 Martyrs and Confessors. 

have gone under a cloud and darkness, without a know- 
ledge of the death of saint or virgin, archbishop, bishop, 
abbot, or other noble dignitary of the Church ; of king or 
prince, lord or chieftain, and of the synchronism or con- 
nection of the one with the other. 1 explained to you that 
I thought I could get the assistance of the chroniclers for 
whom I had most esteem, for writing a book of annals, 
in which the aforesaid matters might be put on record; 
and that, should the writing of them be neglected at 
present, they would not again be found to be put on rec- 
ord, or commemorated to the end and termination of the 
world." Dr. Petrie, the great restorer of Celtic archaeo- 
logical studies in our own time, having cited these words 
in an address before the Royal Irish Academy, adds : 
" How prophetic were the just apprehensions of that 
chief compiler that, if the work were then neglected or 
consigned to a future time, a risk might be run that the 
materials for it should never again be brought together. 
Such, indeed, would have been the sad result. ... In 
that unhappy period nearly all the original materials 
of this compilation probably perished, for one or two 
of them onlv have survived to our times. . . . Had this 
compilation been neglected, or had it, as was supposed, 
shared the fate of its predecessors, what a large portion of 
our history would have been lost to the world forever !" 

There was also another reason why it was particularly 
important, in the beginning of the seventeenth century, 
to guard the few surviving monuments of our country. 
The traditions of the past were then rapidly fading away 
from the memory of our people. 

The newly-imported settlers from England and Scot- 
land had no interest in cherishing such traditions. Novel 
names of districts and towns were everywhere springing 
up, and gradually supplanting the old Irish designations ; 
the system of clans and tribes, each with its respective 
chronicler or bard, handing down from father to son the 



Father Florence O * Moelchonry. 647 

knowledge of the early dialects, was also broken up for- 
ever ; and thus there was imminent peril lest even the few 
monuments that had survived the storm of past vandal- 
ism might be unintelligible records and a sealed book 
for posterity. Hence I hesitate not to say that, were it 
not for the Irish Franciscans in the besrinnins; of the 
seventeenth century, and for others who, both at home 
and abroad, emulated their devotedness, and rivalled 
them in their zeal for preserving the literature of our 
country, the history of Ireland at the present day would 
be little more than a mere blank. The name, Island of 
Saints, indeed, might not be forgotten ; but visionaries 
and aliens to our country might, without fear of rebuke, 
usurp its glory, or set forth, as based on realitv, the 
most foolish dreams of their imagination, and pervert 
alike the truths of our history and the tenets of our faith. 
Thanks, however, to those devoted sons of Ireland in 
the seventeenth century, many precious monuments of 
our early Church and history have been preserved to us, 
sheltered by the mantle of St. Francis, in the recesses 
of our island, or in the monasteries on the continent. 
The traditions of our people were duly chronicled, the 
records of the past w r ere illustrated, the knowledge of the 
ancient Celtic language w r as preserved, and those mate- 
rials were handed down which have enabled the w r riters 
of our own day to place beyond cavil the just claims of 
our island to a glorious and hallowed page in the his- 
tory of the Christian world. 

In the ranks of those devoted men, the Irish Francis- 
cans of the Convent of St. Anthony, in Louvain, merit 
the place of honor; not, indeed, that they were the first 
to enter the field of labor, but because thev were foremost 
in reducing to system the study of our antiquities, and, 
more than any others, labored untiringly and perse ver- 
ingly to preserve and illustrate the records of our history. 

This Convent of St. Anthony of Padua, at Louvain, 



648 Martyrs ajtd Confessors, 

dates from the year 1606. " The Rev. Father Conroy, an 
Irishman born, a Franciscan Friar, and then Provincial of 
the Order in Ireland (it is thus an official account of the 
foundation of the college runs), petitioned King- Philip 
III, in 1606, ' that his Catholick majistie would be pleased 
to grant the Irish Franciscans a place for a college, and 
means whereby to live in the towne and universitie of 
Loven, and diocese of Mechlin, to the service and glorie 
of God, to the preservation of the Catholick religion, and 
their holy Order in the Kingdome of Ireland.' " * 

On the 6th of January, 1602, three days after the fatal 
battle of Kinsale, which sealed the fate of Ireland as an 
independent nation, Father Florence Conroy set sail with 
the heroic O'Donnell, to solicit aid from the Spanish 
monarch. Eight months later he watched by the death- 
bed of that brave chieftain, at Simancas, and accorcu 
panied his remains to their regal tomb, in the cathedral 
of Valladolid. 

Father Conroy knew too well the fate that awaited him 
if he set his toot a^ain on the Irish shore. He remained 
at one of the Franciscan convents of Spain, but still con- 
tinued to devote all his energies to promote the welfare 
of religion in his suffering country. 

At the general chapter of the order held at Toledo, 
in i6c6, he was appointed Provincial of Ireland; for, so 
bitter was the persecution that then raged throughout 
the kingdom, that the provincial chapter could nowhere 
be held in Ireland. 

His first care was to petition the Spanish monarch for 
the erection and endowment of a convent of the order 

* Arckiv. S. Isid., Rome. — There has been much controversy about the date 
of the foundation of the Convent of St. Anthony, some placing it in the year 
1606, others in 1609, others at a later period. See Renehan, "Collections on 
Irish Church History/' page 190. The dates in our text are taken from the 
official document above referred to, and from copies of the original letters of 
Philip III and the Archbishop of Mechlin, preserved in the archives of St. 
Isidore's in Rome, 



Father Florence O'Moelchonry. '649 

in the city and university of Louvain. This request 
was readily granted ; and Philip III, by letters dated the 
2 1st of September, 1606, signified his pleasure to the 
Archduke Albert, Governor of the Low Countries, as 
also to the Marquis Spinola, commander of the forces 
there, that the petition of Father Conroy should be 
granted without delay, and that one thousand Spanish 
ducats per annum should be allotted for the support of 
the new college. Some difficulties, however, arose in 
Louvain about the erection of this national Franciscan 
convent ; and early in the following year we find Father 
Conroy addressing a petition to the reigning pontiff, 
Paul V, soliciting "apostolicke authoritie for building 
the intended colledge," and asking, at the same time, a 
confirmation of the royal pension accorded by Philip III. 
A brief of his Holiness, granting all the requests of the 
Franciscan Provincial, was published on the 3d of April, 
1607, and the letters of the Archduke Albert and of 
Isabella, commanding that this brief should be put into 
immediate execution, are dated the 17th of August, 1607. 
The erection of the building was at once proceeded with ; 
and precisely two years from the date of the papal brief 
(i. e., the 3d of April, 1609), an official, deputed by the 
Archbishop of Mechlin, visited the new college, and in 
canonical form declared it duly " erected and instituted 
for the Franciscans of the Irish nation.'' 

To the influence of Dr. Florence Conroy at the Spanish 
court, and to the favor of the Holy See, Ireland was 
mainly indebted for the tranquil retreat thus secured for 
the zealous children of St. Francis. The fruits which 
the college soon produced, proved how just were the 
expectations which had been formed by its patrons, its 
chronicler assures us that, from the time of its foundation 
to the year 1630, there were chosen from its inmates no 
fewer than three archbishops and two bishops for Irish 
sees, besides eighteen professors of theology, twenty-five 



650' Martyrs and Confessors. 

professors of philosophy, and sixty-three missionaries for 
laboring in the vineyard of the Irish Church,* " some 
of whom laid down their lives, and others suffered im- 
prisonment or exile for the faith of Christ." f 

Although Dr. Conroy receives no place among the 
writers on Irish history and antiquities in the seven- 
teenth century, there can be but little doubt that he 
exercised considerable influence in forming that great 
historical school which, in after time, shed such lustre on 
St. Anthony's of Louvain. He was the son of Fithil 
O'Moelchonry, of Cluantuibh, in Connaught, who was 
an antiquary by profession, and whose family had been 
for centuries the depositaries of the traditions and 
glories of the western districts of the island. In baptism 
he received the name of Flathri, though in after years he 
was better known by the Latin name, Florentins. When 
rather advanced in age, he embraced the religious life 
of the Franciscans of strict observance, and, as Lynch 
informs us, discharged the duties of Provincial of his 
order in Ireland, even before the close of the sixteenth 
century. 

In the month of Mav, 1609, he was promoted to the See 
of Tuam, and though he was unable to console his flock 
in person, he never ceased, by the appointment of zealous 
vicars, and by frequent pastoral letters, to watch over 
their interests, and provide for their spiritual wants. 

During his leisure hours he devoted himself with special 
ardor to the study of the writings of St. Augustine; and 

* There were Hugh MacCaghwell, appointed Archbishop of Armagh on the 
2d of April, 1626 ; Thomas Fleming, appointed Archbishop of Dublin, 23d 
of October, 1623; Florence Conroy, appointed Archbishop of Tuam in 1609 ; 
Bcetius MacEagan, appointed Bishop of Elphin in 1625; and Hugh (Bonaven- 
ture) Magennis appointed Bishop of Down and Connor on the 9th of April, 
1630. The last-named prelate entered the Convent of St. Anthony, Louvain, 
June 2, 1614. 

* ''■Quorum aliqui morte, alii captivitate et carcere pro fide affecti." {Ms. 
Brevis Synop., etc., p. 60.) 



Father Florence (J Moelchonry, 651 

it is recorded that he read each of that great Father's 
works seven times. 

Warding, in his history of the writers of the Francis- 
can Order, gives a list of the theological writings of 
Dr. Conroy, some of which were not published till alter 
the death of this prelate. They were held in great 
esteem by some of his contemporaries, and were fre- 
quently appealed to in the angry controversies on the 
subject of divine grace, which agitated the schools at 
this period. 

An important letter of Dr. Conroy, dated at Val- 
ladolid, the 1st of March, 161 5, on the conduct of the 
Catholic members of the Irish parliament, in permitting 
the confiscation of the estates of the Ulster chieftains, 
O'Neil and O'Donnel, is preserved to us in the " His- 
toria Catholica" of O 'Sullivan Beare. In it he passes 
a high eulogy on the individual character of those mem- 
bers, most of whom were of English descent, but he 
censures their parliamentary conduct in sacrificing the 
interests of their Irish brethren, and thus effecting the 
ruin of religion in Ulster. " They showed but little 
constancy," he says, "in admitting Sir John Davis as 
Speaker of the House, and in allowing the unconstitu- 
tionally elected members to sit with them in parliament. 
My fears," he adds, " were increased by what you told 
me of the confiscation, and you appear yourself as if un- 
decided about its illegality, when you say that otherwise 
the king and his party would be offended. What ! will they 
not be offended if you refuse the oath of supremacy, or 
if you oppose the confiscation of your own property 
to-morrow or next-day ? . . . Do you doubt that it is 
sinful to rob men, not convicted of any crime, of their 
property ? Were not these noblemen pardoned by the 
king? And if they, either to avoid calumnious suspicion, 
or to practise their religion more freely, retired from the 
country, is that a crime either proved or notorious? 



652 Martyrs and Confessors. 

Moreover, most of the Catholics on all that territory 
must soon, at least in a few generations, be perverted 
to error, and their example and numbers will spread 
heresy through the other provinces. And are these souls 
to be sacrificed to etiquette, or to the labor and pain of a 
three days' struggle and opposition? What! do you not 
daily give up your properties ; do you not sacrifice the 
fines and penalties of not attending the Anglican worship, 
rather than violate a law of the Church ? And yet here 
is a matter prohibited, not by a law of the Church, but 
by the law of nature and of God. God in his mercy 
grant that you commit not such a crime, nor tarnish your 
former glory, nor provoke the wrath of the Almighty !" 

One of the most valuable of Dr. Conroy's works was a 
small catechism which was printed in Irish, at Louvain, 
in 1626, with the title, " The Mirror of a Christian Life." 

After many years of painful exile, this illustrious 
founder of St. Anthony's died in a convent of his order, 
at Madrid, on the 18th of November, 1629, in the sixty- 
ninth year of his age, and the twenty-first of his episco- 
pacy. His remains were translated to Louvain in 1654, 
and a becoming monument was erected at the right of 
the high altar in the church of the Irish Franciscans, with 
an appropriate inscription, dictated by Nicholas Aylmer, 
the rector of the pastoral college at Louvain. 

If the new Irish foundation at Louvain was fortunate 
in having such a founder, it was, perhaps, still more for- 
tunate in having Father Donatus Mooney for its first 
guardian. He was a man earnestly devoted to the study 
of the antiquities of Ireland ; and to him we are especially 
indebted for that Irish historical school which soon 
became characteristic of St. Anthony's, and enabled it, 
in after times, to render such services, and shed such 
light on the early monuments of our history 

Whilst as yet a Franciscan novice, Father Mooney 
suffered imprisonment for the faith. He was living with 



Father Florence (J Moelchonry. 653 

the Provincial of the order, Father John Gray, in the mon- 
astery of Multifernan, and the aged Bishop of Kilmore, 
Dr. Richard Brady,* had chosen the same sanctuary as 
a safe retreat. They were, however, all seized, in 1601, 
and dragged to prison, where our young novice lin- 
gered for some months. Whilst yet in prison he com- 
pleted his novitiate, and was admitted to the holy vows 
of his order by his fellow captive, the Father-Provincial. 
Soon after, he was liberated, but on the condition that 
he should seek a home in exile on the continent. 

The chronicler of the order adds that he was " a man 
of great ability and learning. After teaching philo- 
sophy and theology in France, he was appointed the first 
guardian of the Convent of St. Anthony in Louvain, and 
subsequently he held a similar office in Drogheda. He 
was a distinguished preacher, and strenuously labored for 
the conversion of the heretics, and the salvation of the 
faithful. Being elected Provincial of the order, in the 
chapter held in Waterford, in 161 5, he for three years 
faithfully discharged the duties of that arduous post." 

Father Mooney seems to have had a special talent 
for the reconstruction of the walls of the sanctuary in 
Ireland. 

In 1610 he was sent as superior to Drogheda, to 
restore the house of the order, which, from the middle 
of the thirteenth century, had flourished till the year 
1546, when it was reduced to ruin by Moses Hill, one of 
the unprincipled agents of the lawless monarch, Henry 
VIII. From an account of this Franciscan mission in 
Drogheda, which was forwarded to Rome in 1623, we 

Dr. Richard Brady was a religious of the Order of Saint Francis, and had 
been Provincial from 1570 to 1573. He was appointed Bishop of Ardagh on the 
27th of January, 1576, and was subsequently translated to Kilmore on the 9th 
of March, 1580. He lived to an advanced age, and died from the hardships of 
his imprisonment, in 1607. Ward, in his narrative, merely states that " he was 
several times seized and imprisoned by the heretics." Many details regarding 
the bishop may be seen in the history of the Franciscan monasteries. ( 



654 Martyrs and Confessors. 

learn some interesting: details regarding; the Irish Church 
at that period of its desolation. 

Father Balthaser de La Hoyd, a native of the diocese, 
was at this time vicar-general of the absent primate, 
Peter Lombard,"* and resided in Drogheda. In 1623 his 
health was seriously impaired by illness, and his nephew, 
Christopher de La Hoyd, was his appointed delegate, 
with the same powers of vicar-general, and at the same 
time received the charge of the parishes of St. Peter's 
and St. Mary's, in that town. At this time there was only 
one public oratory in the town ; in it the vicar-general 
performed the ceremonies of the Church with as much 
pomp as the circumstances of the time would allow, and 
he was assisted by two Jesuits, Fathers Robert Bath 
and James Everard, who established there the Confrater- 
nity of the Blessed Virgin, and labored with zeal in admin- 
istering the Bread of Life to the faithful. 

Some ruins of the old Franciscan convent still re- 
mained ; and as close to them as his safety would permit, 
the new superior rented a private house, where a small 
oratory was erected, and the faithful very soon flocked 
in crowds, to approach the holy sacraments. 

It happened that the Protestant Primate, Christopher 
Hampton, had chosen Drogheda for his residence, and 
was now busily engaged building an episcopal palace 
for himself and his successors. 

The new impulse given to Catholic piety was little 
less than treason in the eyes of the Protestant dignitary ; 
hence, he more than once assailed the humble lodgings 
of the Franciscans, destroyed the altar, and carried off 
the religious to prison. They persevered, nevertheless ; 
and the chronicler of the order, writing in 1630, was able 
to attest that, from the reestablishment of the convent in 

* For many particulars connected with this illustrious Archbishop of Armagh, 
see the introduction to his work entitled, "De Hibernia Insula Commentarius" 
Dublin, Duffy: 1868. 



Father Florence ' Mwlchonry. 655 

1610, ''the friars never ceased to labor for the salvation 
of the faithful and the conversion of heretics, although 
they have been several times persecuted, and some of them 
arrested and put in prison." 

It was also through the exertions of Father Mooney 
that the Franciscan Order was reestablished in Dublin, 
in 161 5. Here, too, the ancient convent had been sup- 
pressed by order of Henry VIII, and was sold for secu- 
lar purposes in 1543. In Cook Street, which was now 
chosen for their new and more humble abode, the relig- 
ious set to work with true devotedness ; schools were 
opened, especially for the instruction of their own stu- 
dents in philosophy and theology, and the chronicler 
adds that " the faith received extraordinary increase in 
the city and neighboring county by the preaching of 
the friars." The persecuting spirit of the so-called 
Reformation was soon, however, to blight all the fair 
promise of this good work. The destruction of the 
Franciscan schools and convent has been described 
by many anti-Catholic as well as Catholic writers. It 
is unnecessary to repeat what they have written, but we 
will add to their testimony the following unpublished 
narrative, written in 1633 : — 

" Through the enmity of Satan our schools and con- 
vents were soon destroyed, when, on the 26th December, 
the feast of St. Stephen, in the year 1629, the heretical 
mayor of the city of Dublin, named Christopher Foster, 
accompanied by the Protestant pseudo-bishop and a body 
of troops, assailed the chapel of the Friars Minors of that 
city, overthrew the images and altars, and carried off its 
other ornaments ; but when leaving the place, the mayor 
with his followers was assailed with sticks and stones by 
an excited tumultuous crowd of women and boys, on 
account of which offence very many of the Catholics, 
men and women, boys and girls, were arrested and 
thrown into prison; some youths, moreover, were pun- 



656 Martyrs and Confessors. 

ished with the lash ; and in the following year, 1630, 
the 24th of February, by a new edict of King Charles 
of England, the aforesaid chapel and convent of the 
Friars Minors, in Dublin,, were sacked and levelled to 
the ground." 

Father Mooney, as we have seen, was chosen Provincial 
of the order in Ireland, in 161 5. The following year he 
proceeded to St. Anthony's in Lou vain, to watch over 
the growth of that institution ; and during the leisure 
months that he enjoyed there, composed the history 
of his order in Ireland, — a work of vast research, and full 
of invaluable details, not only regarding the early founda- 
tions of the various Franciscan convents, but still more 
illustrative of the desolation and ruin that fell upon the 
Irish Church during the sad era of the Reformation, under 
Henry VIII, Elizabeth, and James I. It has been em- 
bodied and popularized in the interesting " History of 
the Rise and Fall of the Irish Franciscan Monasteries," 
by Rev. P. C. Meehan, — a work full of interest to all 
students of Irish literature. 

There is another Franciscan father who merits to be 
mentioned among the first promoters of Celtic studies at 
St. Anthony's. This was Giolla-Brigid, or Bonaventure 
Hussey, a native of Ulster, who, in the chronicles of 
the order, is described as a " man held in great esteem 
for his singular skill in the language and history of 
Ireland." 

In a manuscript list of the first religious who received 
the habit in the convent of St. Anthony, we find the 
name, " Bonaventura Hosceus, antca Brigidus, diocesis 
Cloghorensis, admissns die 1 Novejnbris, 1607." O'Reilly, in 
his " Irish Writers," states that, in 1608, Father Hussey 
published his prose Irish catechism in Louvain, the first 
book printed on the continent in Irish, and that it was 
reprinted at iVntwerp, in 161 1. 

We suspect, however, that the date of its first publication 



Father Florence <J Moelchonry. 657 

in Louvain should be 161 8, in which year an edition ot it, 
under the title of " The Christian Doctrine," is mentioned 
by Anderson. At ail events, it was only in 161 1 that 
the Irish typographical press was established at St. 
Anthony's, as we learn from the following passage of the 
history of the order, written in 1630: "The Irish con- 
vent of Louvain, for the salvation of souls in the kingdom 
of Ireland, established in the year 161 1 a printing-press, 
with the proper type for the Irish letters, which, on 
account of the prevailing heretical rule, was heretofore 
impracticable to the Catholics of that kingdom, and 
printed some books in the Irish language, to the great 
advantage of the faithful." Father Hussey also com- 
posed a metrical catechism, in two hundred and fort} 7 
verses, which, a century later, was published by Donlevy 
as an appendix to his own famous catechism in the Irish 
language. O'Reilly mentions several other unpublished 
poems composed by the same writer, some of which are 
preserved in the Royal Irish Academy. 

The extract from the history of the order just cited 
mentions some books printed in the Irish language at St. 
Anthony's. It is not easy now to determine what these 
books were : one of them, no doubt, was the Irish cate- 
chism of Dr. Conroy, already referred to : another was 
the " Mirror of Penance," published in 1618 by Hugh 
MacCaghwell, O. S. F., who was subsequently appointed 
to the primatial See of Armagh. 

In a manuscript catalogue of the books of the Irish 
convent of Louvain, made about the year 1675, we find 
mention of another work, with the title, "Acta Sanctarum 
Virginiim Hibernia?" which, some time before, had been 
lent to the convent of Donegal. Perhaps this, too, may 
have been one of the books referred to in the above 
extract. At all events the Irish type of St. Anthony's 
continued for many years to render good service to Irish 
literature. The illustrious annalist, Michael O'Clery, 



658 Martyrs and Confessors. 

availed himself of it when publishing his " Glossary," in 
1643. Father Anthony Gernon, another Irish Franciscan, 
made use of it, in 1645, for his " Paradise of the Soul ;" 
a Jesuit, Father Richard MacGiollacuddy (better known 
by his Anglicized name of Archdekin) printed with it a 
" Treatise on Miracles," in 1677 ; and Colgan and his 
brother hagiologists made frequent use of it in the Irish 
extracts inserted in their various Latin works. The type 
was still preserved at St. Anthony's in 1675, but there 
was then but little encouragement for Irish publications. 
In the manuscript list of the books belonging to the 
convent, of which we have already spoken, the following 
passage is added, as precious as it is concise, giving the 
only reference to this Irish type which we have been able 
to discover in contemporary records : — 

" In a plain chest is preserved the type of the printing- 
press ; the key is over the chest. In the pulpit there is one 
silver chalice belonging to the convent of Donegal, a small 
case of the relics of various saints, and the silver seal 
belonging to O'Donell. In the first of the upper rooms, 
in a small chest, is the Irish type, with its own forms ; also 
several copies of Colgan's works, Ward's ' St. Romuald,' 
the Fochloir (i. e., O'Clery's " Glossary,") and some skins 
for the covers of books." 

With the annals of Father Hugh Ward, in 1623, began 
the golden era of historical studies in St. Anthony's. For 
fifty years the religious of that convent pursued these 
studies with unrivalled activity, although more than once 
their material resources were quite exhausted ; and they 
merited for their convent the eulogy bestowed by no 
partial writer in our own days : " No Franciscan college 
has maintained, with more zeal than this, the character 
of the order, as expressed in their motto: * Doctrina et 
sanctitate? " (Proceedings of R. I. A., vol. iii, page 485.) 

The learned Bollandist, Father de Buck, having cited 
these words, adds : " It would be easy to show the justness 



Father Florence O * Moelchonry. 659 

of this eulogy, presenting in detail the names of the pro- 
fessors who have taught at St. Anthony's." 

The historian of Louvain, writing in 1667, laments the 
poverty which the inmates of St. Anthony's had so often 
to endure ; for frequently the promised aid of the govern- 
ment was withheld, and the Irish exiles, now that all 
their property was confiscated in Ireland, could con- 
tribute but little to the support of their religious country- 
men, either at home or abroad. A century later, another 
writer of Louvain dwells on the same theme, but adds: 
" Notwithstanding their poverty, we have often seen 
amongst these religious, and we still see amongst them, a 
number of men of distinction, and of the highest nobility, 
who prepared themselves there, by study and piety, to 
sustain the Catholic religion in England and Ireland. 
There were even many amongst them who suffered per- 
secution, imprisonment, and cruel torments for the faith." 
In the wars and tumults of which Belgium was the 
theatre during the closing quarter of the last century, the 
Convent of St. Anthony's was more than once exposed 
to the fury of the contending parties : and yet this was 
not the worst violence to which it was subjected. An 
edict of the Emperor Joseph II, in 1782, appointed a 
visitor, and enacted some vexatious laws regarding the 
religious, though it did not entirely suppress the con- 
vent. Two years later, the overflowing of the Dyle swept 
away all their cattle, wood, and property of every kind. 
At length, in 1796, when Louvain was invaded by the 
French, their convent was wholly dismantled, its church 
was desecrated, its property sold, and this hallowed abode 
of Irish piety and learning was thenceforth closed against 
the children of St. Francis. 



FATHER PATRICK FLEMING, 0. S. F. 

1631. 

Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. (1631).— Reverend Matthew Hoare, Deacon, 
O. S. F. (1631). — Most Reverend Hugh MacCaghwell, Archbishop of Armagh 
(1626). — Right Reverend Edmund Dongan, Bishop of Down and Connor 
(1629J. — Fathers Francis Ferrall, Malachy Fallen, Francis Fleming, O. S. F., 
and also many early Irish Saints, Sketches of whose Lives were preserved 
by Father P. Fleming in his valuable '" Collectanea Sacra" 

Patrick Fleming was born at Bel-atha-Lagain, in. the 
parish of Clonkeen, county Louth, on the 17th of April, 
1599. The ruins of his family mansion are still pointed 
out, close by the modern Lagan bridge, near the junc- 
tion of the three counties of Louth, Meath and Mona- 
ghan. He was connected by birth with the noble 
houses of Slane and Delvin, but his virtues and learn- 
ing, still more than his family honors, reflected a bright 
lustre on his name. From a short-time biographical 
notice which was composed by Colgan, and prefixed to 
Sirinus' edition of the " Collectanea Sacra," we learn that 
Fleming received in baptism the name of Christopher, 
and that from his infancy he gave proofs of that piety, 
sedateness and diligence, which characterized his after 
years. At the age of thirteen- he was sent to the conti- 
nent, to preserve him from the danger of proselytism, 
which was as imminent from the Court of Wards to the 
children of the Irish nobility, during King James's reign, 
as it is to the children of our poor from the birds' nests 
of the present day. The Reverend Christopher Cusack, 
uncle of Fleming, was at this time administrator of the 
Irish colleges for the secular clergy in Flanders ; and, in- 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. 65 1 

deed, these institutions mainly depended on his munifi- 
cence for their support. Under his guidance, Fleming 
pursued the humanity studies in Douay, and passed 
thence to the College of St. Anthony, at Louvain, where, 
on the 17th of March, 1617, at the hands of Father An- 
thony Hickey, he received the habit of St. Francis, and 
assumed in religion the name of Patrick. 

In. 1623, Father Fleming, having completed his philo- 
sophical and theological course, was chosen by Hugh 
MacCaghwell, — then Definitor-General of the Order of 
St. Francis, and soon after promoted to the primatial see 
of Armagh, — to be the companion of his journey to Rome. 

Passing through Paris, he contracted a close friendship 
with Hugh Ward, to whom he promised a zealous and 
devoted cooperation in searching out and illustrating 
the lives of the early saints of Ireland, " in the hope," says 
his biographer, "that, by promoting piety toward those 
holy men, their example might be imitated by our people, 
and those golden years be renewed amongst us which 
shed such lustre and glory on our country." 

In the memoir of Father Hugh Ward, we give the 
letters that were addressed to him by Father Patrick 
Fleming as he journeyed on toward the Eternal City. 
His subsequent letters from Rome furnish us with addi- 
tional interesting details regarding his researches in the 
cause of Irish history. He had passed through Bobbio, 
and discovered there, with other monuments of our 
ancient Church, the precious fragments of St. Colum- 
banus, which were afterward published in the " Collectanea 
Sacra" These he forwarded without delay to Ward, and 
on the feast of St. Mary Magdalen, 22d of July, 1623, he 
wrote to him as follows : — 

" Write as soon as possible, to let me know whether 
you have received the bundle which I sent you with 
the Rule of St. Columban, that we may no longer be 



662 Martyrs and Confessors. 

in anxiety about it. Should you not have received it, 
I will transcribe these documents again for you. The 
other works which I saw in Bobbio have not yet come to 
hand, but there are copies of them here in Rome, so that 
Messingham may be sure to have them for an appendix to 
his work; or they will suffice for a separate volume, 
especially as the Lives I sought for can in part be pro- 
cured here. Thus, instead of one small volume, I think 
you may be able to publish two volumes, which will be 
far more becoming for our Island of Saints. 

" That you might have some idea of the treasure 
which I hope, with the blessing of God, to send you, I 
went with Father Wadding (to whom you will return due 
thanks for all the trouble he has taken with me in this 
matter) to the library of the Oratorians, where Baronius 
composed his ' Annals,' and I found there the Life of St. 
Peregrinus, in four large manuscript sheets, from which 
it appears that he was a true saint, and a glorious de- 
spiser of mundane vanity. I found there, also, the Life of 
St. Donatus of Fiesole, with a lengthy appendix of a 
Benedictine monk, named Cajetan, who, amongst other 
things, proves him to have come from Ireland. The Life 
of the same saint, which is in the Minerva Library, where, 
however, it is hard to find anything as its books are all 
upside down, states that he was ex Scotia ubi nullum vivit 
animal venenosum, which manifestly refers to Ireland. 
Some other Lives as, for instance, of St. Patrick and St. 
Brendan, I found there also ; but you do not require 
these. There are also some poems of St. iEmilian, but 
I could not find his Life. I hope, in the course of time, 
to find much more in this library ; and rest assured I 
will not be slothful at the work. 

" If I had a religious to accompany me in the present 
great heat, I would myself copy the above Lives. Father 
Hugh MacCaghwell, however, cannot bear the heat at all, 
and thus I am obliged to defer this toil for the present. 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. 66$ 

There is a pretty full Life of St. Andrew of Fiesole, who 
is expressly called Hybernns, which Father Luke Wad- 
ding has promised to translate into Latin for me. 

" 1 will be able to have, without much trouble, the Life 
of St. Frigidian, for his congregation is established at 
Lucca, where he founded a monastery, still so famous 
throughout Italy, that there are some cardinals connected 
with it. Our primate, Peter Lombard, saw this Life, and 
thinks he has a copy of it among his papers, and promises 
it to me. 

" There are some persons in this city who celebrate St. 
Frigidian's office, and I am sure we will find his Acts 
with some of them. 

" Be careful to mark the place and library from which 
you receive each work, that thus your history may be 
the more trustworthy, for that is a very important point, 
as Father Luke Wadding assures me ; and hence he 
constantly marks them in his writings. I have in my 
possession the commentary of our primate, Lombard, 
on the affairs of Ireland ; but if you except the history 
of the last centuries, he has scarcely anything that I had 
not seen before. He is more full, however, than others 
on the question of the nomenclature, as he illustrates it 
copiously from Bede and other writers. 

" This is the third day that the cardinals are in con- 
clave for the election of a Pontiff. Pray to God that we 
may have a Pope who, by word and example, may 
instruct the fold of Christ." 

The many Lives of our Irish Saints enumerated by 
Fleming in this letter are all still preserved in the Ora- 
torian Library, at the Chiesa Nuova. The most interest- 
ing, perhaps, and at the same time the least known, is the 
life of St. Pellegrine, or Peregrinus, by which name our 
countryman is now known among the faithful of Italy. 

Having made a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, he chose 



664 Martyrs and Confessors, 

for himself a hermitage there in a desert place, and for 
several years practised in his daily life all the austerities 
of the early anchorets. In the first Saracen irruptions, 
he was made prisoner, and suffered a great deal. The 
leader, however, of these marauders was so struck by 
some miracles which the saint performed, that he restored 
him to liberty. The holy man then journeyed back to 
Italv, and chose for himself another hermitage in a 
mountainous and woody district on the borders of the 
territory of Lucca, where he soon after passed to a 
better life. After his death many miracles attested his 
sanctity. An oratory was erected over his remains, and 
pilgrims, to the present day, flock thither to invoke his 
intercession. 

The St. Andrew to whom Fleming refers, was a 
deacon, and brother of St. Donatus. A small church, 
dedicated to St. Martin, situated on the declivity of 
the hill of Fiesole, and on the banks of the Melsola, was 
repaired by him, and enriched with valuable posses- 
sions. His remains are now enshrined under its high 
altar, and the memory of St. Andrew is cherished with 
warm devotion by the inhabitants of the surrounding 
territory. 

On the 16th of September, 1623, Father Fleming again 
wrote to Hugh Ward, who had now passed from Paris 
to Louvain. He had written, he states, five letters since 
his interview with Ward in Paris, and had as yet received 
no letter in reply. A note, however, had come to hand 
from Messingham, to the effect that his work was has- 
tening to a close, but that he was still ready to fulfil his 
promise of adding any important documents that might 
be forwarded to him. " It would grieve me," adds 
Fleming, " if, through your fault, this present opportunity 
should be lost to us, which, perhaps for years, may not 
occur again. 

" The present time is specially favorable to us, for the 



Father Patrick Fleming, 0. S. F. 665 

Sacred Congregation has imposed a precept on Demp- 
ster to abstain in future from treating of such historical 
matters ; and, whilst this precept lasts, it would be 
important for us to set forth our state of the question, 
whereof, whatever you may have in Louvain, send it 
without delay to Paris to Messingham ; and, hereafter, 
if God gives us the means, we ourselves can republish 
the same documents more elegantly and accurately." 
The conclusion of this letter is altogether characteristic 
of the writer : — 

" If you are suffering from sickness, as I have heard, 
you will do well to depute Father Gallagher to maintain 
correspondence with me till such time as you may be 
restored to health. In the meantime, invoke our coun- 
tryman, St. Peregrinus, who, during life, obtained the 
privilege from God that those who implore his aid for 
anything conducive to their greater good should obtain 
the wished-for favor. 1 pray, you, dear father, be firm 
in your resolve, and be friendly with me. God forbid 
that you yourself should cease to enjoy the blessing of 
light, now that you are preparing to restore our saints 
to that light of which they have been so long deprived !" 

His next letter is dated the 1st of June, 1624. In the 
interval, Fleming had been busily engaged in preparing 
for his public thesis in Rome, and hence had been able to 
do but little in exploring the libraries of the Eternal City. 

The first page of this letter is very much effaced, but, 
from the few sentences that remain, it appears that Ward 
had been for some time dangerously ill, and hence 
Fleming now exhorts him to allow no longer any delay 
in carrving out his holy project in regard to the saints 
of Ireland. He then continues : — 

" You asked me to send you all that I have collected 
here. I would willingly obey, were it not that the thesis 
which I had to defend in public before several cardinals 
occupied all my time. With the blessing of God I will 



666 Martyrs and Confessors. 

be free from this trouble in fifteen days' time, and then 
you will know, by experience, how firm I am in my reso- 
lution ; for, as soon as I shall hear that you have printed 
what I already sent to you, I will transcribe and forward 
the Lives of St. Frigidian, St. Andrew, St. Brigid, St. 
Peregrinus, St. Marinus, bishop, St. Silas, bishop, and 
also the Life of St. Coemghen, which I procured from 
the Jesuit library of Ingolstadt. 

" As regards the Irish saints who flourished in Italy, 
only two remain to be sought for, i. e.: St. Donatus, the 
brother of St. Cathaldus, and St. zEmilian, whom, how- 
ever, 1 know to have been called a Scot. I have already 
told you what you may expect in the next parcel. I forgot 
to mention the Bull for the canonization of St. Virgilius, 
taken from the Regesta of the Roman Pontiffs : it is drawn 
up in the same style as that published for the canonization 
of our holy founder, St. Francis. From this you will be 
convinced of my diligence in exploring the records of 
Rome. But would to heaven 1 were free to pursue 
these studies ! 1 am now here for a year, or thereabouts, 
and yet I have only been able to visit four or five libraries 
in this city. You know how this happens, and hence I 
need say no more. Nevertheless, my noble Hugh, be 
not dispirited; we will yet, with the aid of Him who 
glorifies the saints, do something to add lustre to the 
saints of Ireland, despite the clamor of those who pur- 
sue the vain fictions of their own, imagination. 

" One of the librarians in charge of the Vatican Library 
promised to let me see the catalogue of all the books 
which have been sent by the Duke of Bavaria to the Sov- 
ereign Pontiff: they formed that most celebrated collec- 
tion which was called the Palatinate Library. I expect 
to find many treasures there, as soon as they are arranged! 
in order. I saw amongst them some noble manuscripts, 
but I was not able at the time to examine them. 

" Rev. Eugene Swiney, some time ago, wrote to us 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. 667 

from Paris, stating that he had discovered the writings 
of some Irish philosophers, which he is about to publish, 
and asking: me to forward to him the Homilice Sancti 
Columbani, that both might be published together. It is 
too bad that we should have all the labor, whilst others 
thus bear away all the honor of publishing these homilies, 
which are more precious than the purest gold. This 
should undoubtedly annoy us, were it not that we seek 
to promote the glory of our saints, and not our own' 
glory. The fact is, the homilies have not come from 
Bobbio, but they will be sure to come shortly, for two 
friars will be sent expressly to bring them to us. In the 
meantime, therefore, see what can be done with them in 
Paris, for I will not send them thither till I hear from 
you. Should I have a moment of time, I will transcribe 
one of them that I brought with me from Bobbio, to- 
gether with the Rule of St. Columbanus, which you will 
shortly see in the pages of Messingham's works. 

" Indeed, you should not have accepted your present 
post in Louvain, relinquishing your former important 
work. Father Gallagher might have been appointed to 
teach, for it is folly to select him, so inexperienced in 
such studies, for so important and so urgent a work. 

" Lest I should seem to send you an empty letter, I en- 
close a concise and compendious history of St. Frigi- 
dian, and a similar account of St. Patrick, which contains 
some particulars either omitted or not clearly expressed 
by Jocelyn. The other fragments which I send are most 
curious, and to be highly esteemed ; and they are the 
more authoritative as they were written by a holy martyr. 
I am sure, if you show these things to those who are 
there with you, they will say they are spurious: so be 
careful not to cast such pearls before swine. Keep them 
to yourself, and with the blessing of God we will soon 
find a place for them. I will omit to mention several 
fragmentary notes which I have extracted from the 



668 Martyrs and Confessors. 

Martyrology of Canisius. I have searched in vain for 
'the work of Florus; I pray you to inquire about it from 
all those who are versed in such matters, and especially 
from Myraeus, who lives in Brussels. Ask, also, about 
the Life of St.. Livinus, written by Bonifacio, which I 
know not where to find. 

" See, then, my dearest father in Christ and in his 
saints, what a long letter I have written, through my 
anxiety to converse with you about everything. We 
may soon be together; for, if God permits, I will pro- 
ceed to Louvain after the general chapter, laden with 
documents. 

" In the meantime, let us pray for one another, that our 
holy desires may be fulfilled. I now end this homily, foi 
which 1 have stolen a few hours from my study-time. 
" Dear father, be ever mindful of me. 

" Your truly faithful friend, 

" Fr. Patrick Fleming." 
"Rome, 2 15-/ June, 1624." 

On the 27th of July, Father Fleming wrote again to 
Ward, stating that on the preceding day he had received 
his letter with exceeding joy. He had also received a 
letter from Dr. Fleming, Archbishop of Dublin, giving 
the news that the religious of Louvain were thinking of 
publishing the Lives of the Saints of Ireland, and of 
appointing Father Gallagher to this work. "They do 
not seem in this (adds Fleming) to have maturely pon- 
dered the matter ; for this father, though qualified for 
the task by his memory and his style, is deficient in the 
knowledge of our ancient histories : wherefore I have 
sought to dissuade them from their choice, and have 
urged them to leave the whole burden on your shoul- 
ders." Father Fleming subsequently exhorts Ward to 
begin his series of works with a treatise, " Dc Viris Illustri- 
bus Hiberuice" for which abundant materials were at 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. 66g 

hand. He complains that Messingham had failed in the 
promise which he had made to them, and. therefore, it 
now only remained for them to work on without him. 
" I have sent to you (he thus concludes) some little notes 
with the nephew of the deceased Archbishop of Dublin 
(Dr. Eugene Matthews). I have, at length, received 
from Bobbio the homilies of Saint Columbanus; but in 
the middle of my news 1 am obliged to bring my letter 
to a close. I congratulate you with all my heart on the 
many important documents you have found." 

The last letter from Father Fleming, from Rome, is 
dated 24th of August, 1624. In it he consoles Ward on 
his appointment to teach philosophy, even though this 
should distract him from the great work on the " Saints 
of Ireland," in which he was engaged : " Obedience," he 
says, " is better than sacrifice. Our zeal in publishing the 
Lives of the Saints will not, I trust, be lessened on this 
account, but will be increased by time ; and as our reward, 
we may be enabled to shed greater light on the early 
monuments of our country." He subsequently adds: 
" Lay aside, then, the annotations which, perhaps, you 
contemplate: these require a great deal of leisure, and a 
good supply of books, both of which are now wanting to 
you ; and undertake rather to translate from the Irish lan- 
guage those Lives of the Saints which you have collected, 
and add them to the Latin Lives which you already 
have, and give a compendium of all in one small volume, 
1 De Viris Illustribus Hibcrnice? giving merely the place of 
each one's birth, his manner of life, and his death. 

%l This may be published at but little expense, and you 
can promise in it a longer treatise on the saints of Ire- 
land. This work would cost you little trouble, and you 
might take for your model the work of ' Pit sens de Scrip- 
tor Urns Angliee' By doing this you will avoid displeas- 
ing Messingham ; and, besides, the continental readers, 
seeing reference made to so many saints not named on 



670 Martyrs and Confessors, 

their calendars, will be the more desirous of having 
your treatise on the Lives of these saints. 

" All this I already wrote to you and to the Archbishop 
of Dublin (Dr. Thomas Fleming), but you yourself must 
judge whether it be possible or not. There are many of 
our saints about whom so little is known that they would 
have no place in the Lives of our Saints ; but in such a 
work as I have mentioned, they could be easily intro- 
duced. At all events, rest assured that I will labor here 
untiringly in extracting from various books everything 
connected with our saints, which will serve in future time 
to illustrate their lives. 

" What you write to me about my journey to Louvain 
{i. e., to visit the different libraries on the way), I fear can- 
not be accomplished : for where will I find a companion, 
and how could I intrude myself into houses where I am 
not invited ? There are three Irish religious here : two 
in Rome, and one in Naples. Write to me by return of 
post how a companion can be secured. At all events, by 
the desire of my superiors, I will set out for Louvain next 
Pentecost. 

" Messingham has written here to say that you prom- 
ised to send him any documents you have, if he wished 
to publish them. If human glory were our object, we 
should feel hurt, indeed, that for such a treasure as the 
Rule of St. Columban no acknowledgment is made of 
those who communicated it and discovered it ; but have 
courage, dear father : I have the homilies of St. Colum- 
banus, and there are some letters of the same saint in this 
city, though it is not easy to procure them. It is said 
that -one who resides in the palace of the cardinal to 
whom my thesis was dedicated, has several works of St. 
Columbanus. What truth, however, there is in this, you 
will soon know with certainty. 

" I have not yet received the life of St. Coemghen. 
St. Fulco is called Scotus ; but perhaps I may get some 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. 671 

details concerning him when I pass through Pavia. 
Father Edmund MacCaghwell tells me that he saw in 
Ireland, in Latin, the Life of St. Adamnan, which you say 
is still preserved (in Irish), and easily met with. I par- 
ticularly congratulate you on the Acts and the List of the 
kings which you have received. Why not give us, in 
the course of time, a history of the kings of Ireland, such 
as other nations have ? 

" Leave nothing undone that the library may be en- 
riched with all books necessary for the work ; and make 
sure to carry out your purpose of sending Brother 
Clery to Ireland to collect the manuscripts there." 

It was probably before his departure from Rome that 
Father Fleming composed a sketch of the life of Dr. 
Huiih MacCaghwell, whom he had accompanied to the 
Eternal City, and who was in the meantime promoted 
to the primatial see of Armagh : a dignity which he held 
only for a few weeks. This work of Fleming was incor- 
porated by Vernulseus in the elegant panegyric on the 
deceased primate, which he delivered at Louvain ; and 
its chief facts are preserved by Lynch, in his manuscript 
history of the bishops of Ireland. As MacCaghwell 
himself rendered no small service to Irish literature, in 
the beginning of the seventeenth century, not only by 
his labors in Louvain, but also .by his edition of the 
works of Duns Scotus, and his vindication of the claim of 
Ireland to be the birthplace of that great writer, a few 
passages from the work just cited may not be out of place 
here, or uninteresting to the reader, 

MacCaghwell, in Irish MacCathmhail, was born in 
the county Down, in Ulster, about the year 1 571 , and in 
his youth was sent to the island of Anglesey, to be trained 
in the higher branches of science. There he shone as 
the light of the school, honored by all his companions as 
a prodigy of genius, and as a guide in every path of 
virtue. From the school he was summoned by Hugh 



672 Martyrs and Confessors, 

O'Neil, to be at the same time his counsellor and the 
tutor of his children. He discharged the duties of this 
arduous post with such devotedness and diligence, that 
the great O'Neil presented him with a sword : the highest 
mark of esteem which the warlike chieftain could bestow. 
Toward the close of the century he was sent, together 
with Henry, the son of Hugh O'Neil, on a mission to 
the Spanish monarch, to solicit aid in the religious war 
which the Irish septs were then waging against Eliza- 
beth. This mission was eminently successful ; but other 
thoughts now ensra^ed the mind of MacCa^hwell: and 
laying aside all the hopes and honors which the world 
presented to him, he enrolled his name at Salamanca 
among the children of St. Francis. We need not enter 
into the details of his life in the cloister. Suffice it to 
say that his biographer attests that as, heretofore, he 
surpassed his compeers in human science, so now, among 
his religious brethren, he, " like an angel," pursued the 
higher paths of religious perfection. 

Among his penitential exercises, it is specially men- 
tioned that he constantly wore a rough hair-shirt next 
his flesh, and that he generally protracted his daily fast 
until sunset. He taught sacred theology in Louvain ; 
the same charge was subsequently intrusted to him in 
Rome, and he discharged its duties with universal ap- 
plause ; and whilst the title of Professor Emeritus was 
awarded to him by his superiors, he became generally 
designated by his brethren as " Hugh the Angelic." 

Twice he made the journey to the Eternal City on 
foot, and frequently he, in like manner, visited the houses 
of the order in Spain. It is added, that during his stay 
in Rome he made, once each month, and sometimes more 
frequently, the pilgrimage to its seven chief basilicas. At 
the same time he was instrumental in founding the college 
of his order at St. Isidore's, and he used all his influence 
with Cardinal Ludovisio to procure a similar college in 



Father Patrick Fleming, 0. S. F. 673 

the Holy City for the aspirants to the ranks of the secu- 
lar clergy. This latter project, soon after his demise, 
was realized through the exertions of his friend and 
associate, Father Luke Wadding ; and throughout the 
whole long era of Ireland's gloom, it continued to confer 
many blessings on our Church. He also, in opposition to 
many who feared lest the appointment of new bishops 
to the vacant sees in Ireland might reawaken the embers 
of persecution, procured the appointment of four bishops 
for our island. 

On the death of Peter Lombard, this holy religious, at 
the urgent request of John O'Neil, Earl of Tyrone, was 
selected by Urban VIII to fill the see of Armagh. 

In this exalted dignity he pursued, unchanged, the 
same practices of a devoted Franciscan, and a model of 
observance to all his brethren. He asked and received 
permission to select any six priests of his order, to bring 
them with him as companions and fellow-laborers in his 
new mission. 

Many other special privileges were also accorded to 
him, one of which was a plenary indulgence for those 
who should visit the Church of SS. Patrick, Bridget, and 
Columbkille, in Down and Connor. 

However, he was not destined to revisit the shores of 
his loved country, for, in the designs of God, his labors 
already merited their crown. He had already taken his 
leave of the Holy Father, and received a farewell blessing 
for his flock ; he wished, however, to make, for the 
last time, his usual penitential pilgrimage to the seven 
chief churches of Rome. On the way he was seized with 
fever, and so violent was the attack, that his companions 
feared he would expire on the roadside. Conveyed 
back to the convent of Ara Cceli, the last benediction for 
the dying was sent to him by the Pontiff. He bequeathed 
his cross and ring to Edmund Dungan, Bishop of Down 
and Connor, who proved himself worthy of this gift, by 



674 Martyrs and Confessors, 

laying down his life for the faith in prison, in 1629 ; and 
his only request to his Holiness was that none should be 
chosen as his successor in the see of Armagh but one 
whom John O'Neil, the Earl of Tyrone, would nominate. 
He was interred in the Church of St. Isidore, where an 
epitaph was inscribed to his memory! 

But to return to Father Fleming. Whilst journeying 
from Rome to Louvain, we first meet with him at Ratis- 
bonne, now Regensburg, at the famous Irish monastery 
of St. Peter; and O'Sheerin informs us that he wrote 
there a compendium of the ancient chronicle of that 
monastery. 

This chronicle is frequently referred to by the various 
writers of ecclesiastical history in the seventeeth century, 
and many passages from it are published by Ward, Lynch 
and others. 

This monastery of St. Peter was founded by St. Mari- 
anus, an Irish pilgrim, who, in the year 1067, set out from 
Ireland with two companions, John and Candidus, with 
the intention of visiting the sanctuaries of Rome. Being 
kindly received by a religious community at Ratisbonne, 
they remained some time in that city, copying missals 
and other sacred books. They found at the monastery 
called Obermunster a holy Irishman named Murchertach, 
who was leading a hermit's life, immured in a cell. This 
recluse exhorted Marianus to abandon his journey to 
Italy, and to stay where the rising sun should first dawn 
on him. It was near the Church of St. Peter, at the 
southern gate of Ratisbonne, that he met the rising sun. 
That church, and the adjacent ground, were soon be- 
stowed upon the Irish pilgrims ; and so many were the 
religious who flocked to this monastery, especially from 
the province of Ulster, that before the year 1090 it was 
found necessary to found another monastery to receive 
them. This was called the monastery of St. James, and 
became, in the course of years, one of the richest monas- 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. 675 

teries of Europe. The history of its foundation is one of 
the most interesting portions of the Ratisbonne Chronicle. 
From it we learn that Isaac and Gervase, two Irishmen 
of noble birth, accompanied by two others of the com- 
munity, were sent by the Abbot of St. Peter's to Ireland, 
to collect funds for the new monastery. They were 
kindly received by Conchobhar O'Brien, King- of Ireland, 
and, being loaded with rich presents, returned to Ratis- 
bonne. With the money thus brought from Ireland, the 
site for St. James's Monastery was purchased on the 
western side of the city, and the new monastery erected. 

" Be it known," writes the chronicler, " that neither 
before nor since was there a monastery equal to this, in 
the beauty of its towers, columns, and vaultings, erected 
and completed in so short a time, because the plenteous- 
ness of riches and of money bestowed by the king and 
princes of Ireland was without bound." 

Soon, however, the treasury of the monks was ex- 
hausted ; and Christian, now abbot of the monastery of 
St. James, and descended from the princely family of the 
MacCarthys, undertook a journey to his native country, 
Ireland, to seek the aid of King Dounchadh O'Brien. 

He is said to have been most successful in his mission, 
receiving numerous presents and gifts, but when prepar- 
ing to return, he fell sick and died, and was buried before 
St. Patrick's altar, in the Cathedral of Cashel. The 
treasure which he collected was subsequently forwarded 
to its destination ; and with it were laid the foundations of 
that princely estate with which this famous monasterium 
Scotorum was ever afterward endowed. 

There is one fact connected with the building of the 
monastery which is characteristic of our Irish pilgrims: 
" Whilst the building of the monastery of St. James was 
in progress," writes the German narrator, Wattenbach, 
" one of the monks pursued his journey, accompanied 
only by a boy, till he reached Kiev, then the residence 



6j6 Martyrs and Confessors, 

of the King of Russia; here the king and his nobles 
made him rich presents, so that he loaded several wagons 
with very valuable furs, to the amount of a hundred silver 
marks, and arrived at home in safety, accompanied by 
some merchants of Regensburg. The money obtained by 
' the sale of the furs turned to account, and with it the 
buildings belonging to the monastery were erected, and 
the roof put on the church." 

Father Wadding, in his short notice of the Life of Father 
Fleming, after stating that he was wholly devoted to the 
saints of Ireland, adds that, for the purpose of illustrating 
their Lives, he visited the principal libraries of Italy, 
France, Belgium, and Germany. 

It was probably on the occasion of his present journey 
that Father Fleming made this visit; and a short paper, 
apparently drawn up to serve him as a guide in this 
literary tour, is happily preserved in the library of St. 
Isidore's at Rome : — 

" At Verdun, in France, in the monastery of St. Michael, 
is preserved the Life of St. Malcalinus, who was abbot 
of that monastery. 

" In Virssenaken, in the duchy of Brabant, the Life of 
St. Himmelin, whose relics are preserved in that city. 

" At Fosses, in the diocese of Namur, the Life of St. 
Ultan, who died there. 

" In the monastery of the town of Bury, in Cornwall, 
the Life of St. Buriena, virgin. 

" In Brussels, the Life of St. Rumold, published by 
John Domyns. 

" At Liessies, or Fecan (Lcetiis vel Fisiaci), in Hainault, 
the Life of St. Etto, who reposes in the former place. 

" In the district of Cumberland, in England, the Life 
of St. Bees (St. Begas), virgin. 

" In the city of Condy, in Hainault, the Life of 
Wasnulph, who reposes there. He was the brother of 
St. Etto. 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. 5. F. 6yy 

" At Cologne, in the church of St. Chuvibert, repose 
the two brothers Ewald, See the Chronicle of Sigebert, 
at the year 693, and Molanus, in his additions to the 
Roman Martyrology, at 3d October. 

" At Wansor ( Walciodorum), in the territory of Liege, 
the Life of St. Eloquius, abbot, who reposes there. 

" At Vienna, in Austria, is enshrined the body of St. 
Col man, martyr. 

" In the monastery of Brie, near Paris, the Life of St. 
Syna, who reposes there. 

"At Louvain, the Life of St. Abbuin, Bishop of Fritzlar, 
who reposes there. He was bishop in the city of 
Burback. 

" In the city of Mecklenburg, in the province of the 
Vandal (near Wismar), the Life of St. Ivan, a Scot, who 
was bishop, and suffered martyrdom in the year 1067. 

" At Malogne (Malonise), near Namur, the Life of St. 
Bertuin, abbot, who rests there. 

"In the territory of Aries (in territorio Atrebatensi). 
in Albeniacke, the Life of St. Kilian, who rests there. 
There is a college of regular canons at that city. 

" At Cologne, in the monastery of St. Martin, the Life 
of St. Mimborin, a Scot, who was abbot of that place. 

" At Wurtzburg, in Germany, the Life of St. Machair 
(Sancti Macarii), a Scot, who rests there. 

" At Pontoise (Pontisaras), in Picardy, the Life of St. 
Sadoch, of whom mention is made in the Life of St. 
Riquier, in Surius. 

" At Ingolstadt, the Fathers of the Society of Jesus 
have a Life of St. Kevin." 

In Louvain, Father Fleming was engaged in the chair 
of philosophy and theology during the following years, 
till he was, in 1630, chosen first superior of the newly 
established convent of the order at Prague. One of his 
last letters from Louvain is dated 18th February, 1630, and 



678 Martyrs and Confessors. 

is addressed to Father Robert Rochford (also known as 
Father Robert a Sancta Brigida), who was then in the 
College of St. Francis, in Alcala, 

He invites Father Rochford to hasten his journey to 
Louvain, where everything was prepared to welcome 
him. Their present lecturer of philosophy, he says, 
Father Francis Ferrall, had been appointed to the chair 
of theology in the Argentine Province ; and " as for my- 
self," he adds, " if other duties be not assigned to me, I 
will, at least, devote myself to my ' Columbanus.' " Saint 
Columbanus was a favorite saint of Father Fleming, and 
the fervent religious seems to have devoted each leisure 
hour to collect and prepare for the press this saint's 
hitherto scattered writings. In 1630 St. Anthony's was 
found too small for their ever-increasing numbers ; and 
Father Malachy Fallon proceeded to the court of 
Ferdinand II, to pray for the site of a second convent, 
" in which the exiled students of the Irish province might 
be gathered together to glorify God, and to prepare 
themselves for the mission in their native land." This 
prayer was granted ; and a site in the city of Prague 
being assigned to them, Father Patrick Fleming was 
selected to proceed thither as first guardian and founder 
of the new convent. In the official report of the found- 
ation, sent to Rome by the superiors in Louvain, Father 
Fleming is styled " lector in sacred theology. Having 
completed all his studies in Louvain, he subsequently 
held the post of lector of philosophy and theology 
there, and, what was of more importance, was at all 
times remarkable for the lustre of his virtues." Fleming, 
accompanied by another Irish Franciscan, named Father 
Geraldine, set out on foot for Prague, in the beginning 
of November, 1630, and having overcome a thousand 
difficulties which such a journey in Germany, especially 
in the winter season, presents to a poor Franciscan, 
arrived at his destination before the close of November, 



Father Patrick Fleming, 0. S. F. 679 

and in the next month the first students were sent thither. 
Some fragments of Fleming's letters from Prague have 
fortunately been preserved. On the 12th of April, 163 1, 
he writes to Father Robert Rochford, now lector of 
philosophy at St. Anthony's, Louvain : " There is here 
the greatest scarcity of books, and hence, too, they are 
very dear. Only one or two booksellers can be found in 
the whole of this triple city. One of our greatest diffi- 
culties will be to form a library, unless we get the books 
from Frankfort, as, undoubtedly, we will have to do after 
a time ; and, indeed, this will be less expensive than to 
purchase them either bound or unbound here." On the 
7th of June, writing to Father Malachy Fallon, lector of 
theology in Louvain, he gives a few details concerning 
the new convent : — 

" We have formed a choir capable of containing thirty 
religious, and underneath we have laid out a chapel, 
opening on the street, where formerly there was a 
smith's forge." 

Writing again to Father Rochford, on the 6th of August, 
163 1, he states that he was to start on the following day 
for Vienna, to arrange some difficulties that had arisen 
with the secular authorities regarding his convent. He 
sent also a copy of the seal of- the new convent, having 
for its motto, u Nodus originalis non est in te," and adds : 
" These words are attributed to St. Ambrose, and are 
given by Father Hugh (MacCaghwell), in his ' Rosary of 
the Immaculate Conception,' and therefore T added them 
on the seal." Father Fleming continued in Vienna till the 
middle of October, when he returned to Prague. On the 
25th of that month he writes from his convent there 
that for some days they were all in suspense, in conse- 
quence of the rumors of war. He adds : " We are all well ; 
and when these lawsuits and wars will have ceased, we 
will have many consolations here." 

In a second letter of the same day, he writes : " ■ Co- 



68o Martyrs and Confessors. 

lumbanus' is promised to me by the printer for the next 
fair-day. Be good enough to tell Moretus not to print 
the ' Penitential of St. Cummian,' till I send him a more 
correct copy, together with a dedicatory letter to the 
Abbot of St. Gall's. 

„ " I have not been able to compose this as yet, owing to 
the many distractions I have had. Our own workshops 
are in good order. The Prince de Coravite is our most 
especial friend. Your reverence will kindly ask Father 
Francis Fleming to transcribe forme what Messingham 
has on the ' Purgatory of St. Patrick,' for I am anxious 
to print here the tract of the soldier George, and other 
visions about it, and to dedicate them to this worthy 
prince, who has often spoken to me about that ' Pur- 
gatory ; ' and he is so interested in it that he would wish 
to make the journey to Ireland to see the place." 

Some further details concerning the convent of Prague 
and its devoted superior are given in the preface of 
O'Sheerin to the writings of St. Columban. It was on 
the 2d of July, 163 1, that the Franciscans were publicly 
inducted to their new establishment in Prague by Car- 
dinal Harrach, Archbishop of Prague and Primate of 
Bohemia. His eminence and all the other civil and 
ecclesiastical authorities of Prague being present, a 
discourse composed by Father Fleming was delivered 
with great earnestness and effect by a young religious 
in deacon's orders, named Matthew Hoar, who was 
destined, in a few months, to be the companion of 
Father Fleming in martyrdom. 

Six friars thenceforward devoted themselves there to 
the exercises of piety with unremitting fervor. They 
had to contend against many difficulties ; but Father 
Fleming, to uphold the courage of his companions, con- 
tinually referred in his discourses " to St. Columbanus, 
toward whom he cherished a most tender devotion. 
He set before them the many and almost superhuman 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. 68 1 

difficulties this saint had to encounter ; and to secure 
his patronage and that of their other patron saints, he 
caused the Litan) 7 of the Blessed Virgin to be recited 
each day, with prayers to St. Francis, St. Patrick, St. 
Columbanus, St. Ambrose, St. Catherine, and other 
saints." 

In the month of October, however, the Elector of 
Saxony invaded Bohemia, and, after the victory of 
Leipsic, ravaged the country without opposition. The 
Lutheran peasantry at the same time formed themselves 
into armed bands to plunder the Catholic inhabitants, 
and to wreck the religious houses, scattering or murder- 
ing the inmates. Being warned of impending danger, 
Father Fleming, with three companions, resolved on 
yielding before the storm, and seeking safety in flight, 
whilst the other two religious were commissioned to 
remain in Prague, and to continue, if possible, in posses- 
sion of the monastery. During the octave of All-Saints 
the fugitives set out on their perilous flight, but had not 
proceeded very far when, on the 7th of November, 
Father Fleming and the Deacon Hoar were overtaken 
by a band of Lutheran peasants, and barbarously mur- 
dered. The remains of these worthy religious, who 
thus merited to lay down their lives for Christ, were 
devoutly translated to the town of Noticium, and in- 
terred there under the pulpit in the Franciscan church. 

Before Father Fleming set out for Prague, he had con- 
signed his " Collectanea Sacra" containing the life and 
writings of St. Columbanus, and other valuable tracts 
connected with our early Church, to Moretus, a publisher 
of Antwerp. The death, however, of the holy martyr 
prevented its publication ; and it was only in the year 
1667 that, through the exertions of O'Sheerin, this pre- 
cious monument of Fleming's learning and industry was 
printed and preserved to us. In addition to the extant 
work on St. Columbanus, and the documents connected 



682 Martyrs and Confessors. 

with the life of that saint, the " Collectanea Sacra " pre- 
sents the Life of St. Comgall, founder of Bangor ; the 
Life of St. Molua, patron of Killaloe, and founder of 
Clonfert-Mulloe in the Queen's county ; the Life of St 
Mochaemog (or Pulcherius), a companion of St. Colum 
banus, in Bangor, whose feast is kept on the 13th ol 
March ; also the Penitential Rule of St. Cummian, and 
other important tracts. 

One of its most curious fragments is the mystical inter- 
pretation of the names which occur in the " Genealogy of 
our Saviour," by St. Aileran, or Aireran, as his name is 
sometimes written. St. Aileran has received from our 
Irish writers the epithet of an Egra, i. e., " The Wise," 
He was lecturer in the famous monastery of Clonard ; 
his feast was observed on the 29th of December, and his 
death is marked in the " Annals of Ulster and the Four 
Masters," in the year 674, where he is styled Aileranus 
Sapiens. This "Mystical Interpretation" was known 
to Ware and Usher, both of whom refer to it in their 
writings. Centuries earlier it was inserted by Sedulius, 
in his " Commentary on St. Matthew," and he prefaces it. 
with these words : " Here begins the typical and figu- 
rative signification of the genealogy of Christ, which St. 
Aileran, the wisest of the Scottish nation, explained." 
Fleming found an ancient, though imperfect, copy of 
this tract in the library of St Gall's, in Switzerland, and 
preserved it to us, by inserting it in his " Collectanea 
Sacra." 

Many of the extracts from manuscript Lives of our 
Saints, and the incidental remarks of Fleming himself, 
are full of the deepest interest. Thus at page 362, he men- 
tions that the cambatta, or staff, of St. Columbanus, which 
was sent by that holy abbot to his great disciple, St. Gall, 
as a token of pardon, was still preserved in the monas- 
tery of Fosse, in Rhetia. He adds that " this cambatta 
is of the wood which is called, in the Irish language, 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. 683 

euileann, i. e., holly, which the Germans call baxholzer /' 
and that Stephen White, S. J., was of opinion that this 
was the very pastoral staff of St. Columbanus, which 
perhaps derived its name, cambatta, from the Celtic word 
cam, which means " crooked." In the same monastery 
was preserved the portable reliquary of St. Magnus, 
which he ever carried around his neck, and which con- 
tained relics of the Holy Cross, of the Blessed Virgin, of 
St. Maurice and companions, and of St. Columbanus and 
St. Gall. 

Speaking of the wooden church erected by St. Colum- 
banus, Fleming remarks that this was more Hibemico, as 
is instanced in the church of St. Finan, in Lindisfarne 
(see Bede, H. E., lib. 3, chap. 25), and in the oratory of 
St. Malachy, which, as St. Bernard writes, was formed 
of planed planks of wood, closely and firmly united 
together. 

St. Attala, the disciple of St. Columbanus, erected a 
large wooden cross before the oratory of his loved 
master, and many miracles were performed at it through 
his intercession. 

The question, Did St. Columbanus visit Rome, has 
been warmly controverted. Fleming adopts the opinion 
that he did ; and he mentions, in confirmation of it, that, 
on the ancient monument of the saint in Bobbio, he was 
represented as kneeling at the feet of the Roman Pontiff, 
and receiving from his hands the venerable reliquary 
which had ever since been zealously guarded at that 
monastery. A very old painting was also preserved 
there, representing St. Comgall imparting his blessing to 
St. Columbanus and his twelve companions, when setting 
out on their distant mission. 

One of these figures had the inscription, " St. Kilian, 
companion of St. Columbanus, on his journey to Rome." 
We may be allowed to add that other ancient records 
connected with the monastery of Bobbio, and now pre- 



684 Martyrs and Confessors. 

served in the Barberini Library, Rome, fully confirm this 
opinion of Father Fleming. 

Speaking of the monastery of Bangor, where St. Co- 
lumbanus had been trained to piety and science, Father 
Fleming thus writes : "The seminary, indeed, merited that 
its site should be marked out by an angelic vision, and be 
watered into more abundant increase and growth by the 
grace of the Holy Spirit. . . . There still may be seen, 
on the spot where the Bangor monastery stood, some 
structures, and vast walls of white stone, and various 
enclosures, all of which betoken its former grandeur." 

In a valuable commentary on the Life of St. Colum- 
banus, Fleming treats of the various persons and places 
mentioned in the memoir of the saint by Jonas, as also of 
the conversion of Ireland, of its ancient name of " Scotia," 
its fame for sanctity, and the glories of the monasteries 
with which it was enriched. 

He has another special dissertation on the Rule of St 
Columbanus, in which he inserts the Catalogue of the three 
orders of Irish saints, subsequently published by Usher. 
Fleming tells us that his text of this famous Catalogue 
was taken from " a very ancient and accurate Life of St. 
Patrick," and that he had also another copy of it, made 
by Father Matthews, Provincial of the Order of St. 
Francis, in the year 1626, from manuscript volumes of the 
ancient Life of St. Finian ; one of which was in Usher's 
library, and the other in the monastery of the Island of 
All Saints, in Loughrea. There are some important 
variations between Usher's and Fleming's text of this 
Catalogue : and Dr. O'Connor, in his "Rev. Hib. Scriptores" 
(vol. ii, page 162), and the most learned of our later 
writers, give the preference to Fleming's text. We are 
sure no apology is needed for inserting in full this most 
important fragment from our ancient church : — 

" Here begins the ' Catalogue of the Order of Saints in 
Ireland,' according to the various periods. 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. 685 

" The first order of saints was in the time of Patrick ; 
and then they were all bishops, illustrious and holy, and 
full of the Holy Ghost, four hundred and fifty in number J 
the founders of churcnes, worshipping the one head, 
Christ, and following the one leader, Patrick, having the 
one tonsure, and one liturgy of the Mass, and they kept 
one Easter, viz., after the vernal equinox, and what was 
excommunicated by one church was excommunicated by 
all : they did not reject the ministrations and society of 
women, because, founded on the rock, Christ, they feared 
not the blast of temptation. This order of saints con- 
tinued throughout four reigns, that is, from the time of 
Laoghaire, the son of Niall, who reigned thirty-seven 
years, and of Oilioll, surnamed Inolt, who reigned thirty 
years, and of Lugadh, who reigned seven years ; and this 
order of saints continued down to the latter days of 
Tuathall who was surnamed Moelgarbh, and they all 
continued holy bishops. 

"But the second order of saints was as follows: for in 
this second order there were few bishops and many 
priests, in number three hundred, worshipping the one 
head, the Lord; they had different forms of liturgy and 
different rules of life, and they celebrated the one Easter 
on the fourteenth moon. And they made a uniform 
tonsure, viz., from ear to' ear. They also shunned the 
society and ministrations of women, and they excluded 
them from their monasteries. This order also lasted 
for four reigns, that is, from the latter days of Tuathal 
Moelgarbh, and during the thirty years that Diarmait 
McKearvaill reigned, and throughout the time of the 
two grandsons of Muiredach, who reigned for seven 
years, and throughout the time of Aedh, son of Ainmire, 
who reigned for thirty years. They received a form 
of liturgy of the Mass from the holy men of Britain, 
viz. : from St. David and St. Gildas, and from St. Docus. 
And their names are these, viz. : Finian, Enda, Colman, 



686 Martyrs and Confessors. 

Comgall, Aedh, Kieran, Columba, Brendan, Briequinas, 
Cainnech, Coemgen, Laisrean, Laisre, Lugeus, Barrinde, 
and many others, who were of the second order of 
saints. 

" The third order of saints was as follows : for they 
were holy priests and a few bishops, in number one hun- 
dred, who dwelt in desert places. They lived on herbs 
and water and the alms of the faithful, and despised all 
earthly things, and wholly avoided all murmuring and 
detraction. They had different rules and different forms 
of liturgy, and also a different tonsure, for some wore 
the crown and others the hair, and they had a different 
Paschal solemnity ; for some celebrated it on the four- 
teenth moon, others on the thirteenth. This order con- 
tinued throughout four reigns, that is, during the time 
of Aedh Allain, who reigned only three years, and during 
the time of Domhnall, who reigned for thirty years, and 
during the time of Aedh Slaine, and this order continued 
till that great mortality. These are their names : 
Petran, bishop ; Ultan, bishop ; Colman, bishop ; Aedam 
bishop; Lomnan, bishop; Senach, bishop. All these 
and many others were bishops. But the priests were 
these, viz. : Fechin, the priest, Airendan, Faillan, Cum- 
mian, Colman, Ernan, Cronan, and many other priests. 

" It is to be remarked that the first order was thrice 
holy ; the second order holy in the second degree ; and 
the third order holy. 

" The first order glows like the sun with the fervor of 
charity ; the second is pale like the moon ; the third shines 
like the aurora. 

" The blessed Patrick, taught by a divine revelation, 
foreknew these three orders when, in that prophetic 
vision, he saw all Ireland filled with a glowing fire ; then 
only the mountains seemed to burn, and afterward he 
saw lights only burning in the valleys."* 

* "Irish Ecclesiastical Record." 



Father Patrick Fleming, O. S. F. 6S7 

The " Collectanea Sacra " is a quarto volume of four 
hundred and eighty pages. It is to be desired that a 
book so valuable and so much sought for should be re- 
published, and thus made accessible to the students of 
our antiquities, most of whom are at present practically 
excluded from the use of it. 



FATHER HUGH WARD, O.S.R 

A. D. 1635. 



St. Mansuetus, Bishop of Tulle. — SS. Fursey, Brigid and Cadroe. — SS. Dympna 
and Gerebern. — SS. Hilvaris and Oda. — St. Rumold, Archbishop of Dublin. 
— St. Forannen. 

It was in 1623 that Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F., ar- 
rived at the Convent of St. Anthony of Padua, in Lou vain. 
He had many years before embraced the Franciscan Rule 
at Salamanca, where he pursued his studies of philo- 
sophy and theology, and acquired considerable fame 
for acuteness of mind and depth of research. Father 
Pontius, a distinguished professor of the order in Rome, 
publicly eulogized him, in after times, as surpassing the 
most famous Franciscan professors of that age in scholas- 
tic subtlety. Father O'Sheerin gives him no less praise : 
" Deformed in body, he was endowed with every accom- 
plishment of mind ; he was affable in his words, which 
sparkled with wit and humor; being of holy conversa- 
tion and spotless life, he was at the same time endowed 
with brilliant genius, and was profoundly versed in 
philosophical and theological science. 

From Salamanca he proceeded to Paris, as companion 
to Father Francis de Arraba, confessor of the Queen of 
France ; and there he enjoyed abundant leisure to pursue 



Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F. 689 

his favorite studies, and explore the rich literary treasures 
of that great capital. It was at this time that the Scot- 
tish historian, Dempster, published his famous work on 
the saints of Scotland, in which he appropriated to his 
native calendar most of the holy men who adorned our 
country by their sanctity in the first ages of our faith. 
It has been said of him that " he was as well inclined to 
believe a lie as any man in his time, and as well qualified 
to put it into a pretty dress of poetry." He was, how- 
ever, a man of extensive reading, and he must be pardoned 
if, writing in the beginning of the seventeenth century, he 
assumed, as a matter of course, that in the olden records 
the name Scotus and Scotia referred to modern Scotland. 
His piracy of Irish saints awakened the energy and zeal 
of our exiled countrymen, and we will have occasion 
hereafter to refer to the tracts which were published soon 
after by David Rothe and others, refuting Dempster's 
groundless but attractive statements. Ward enlisted 
with ardor in this controversy, and thenceforward each 
hour at his disposal was devoted to explore the records of 
the past, and to search out new monuments illustrative 
of the history of the saints of Ireland. 

Indeed this study of the antiquities of our country 
was nothing new in the family of Hugh Ward. He be- 
longed to that branch of the family that gave name to 
Bally mac-Ward, in Donegal. His ancestors had been for 
centuries the hereditary bards of the O'Donnells, princes 
of Tyrconnell, and in poetry and minstrelsy had often 
borne away the palm from the chief poets of Ireland. 

In the "Annals of the Four Masters," in 1541, we find 
recorded that " MacWard, ollamh to O'Donnell in poetry, 
a superintendent of schools, and a man not excelled in 
poetry and other arts, who had founded and maintained 
a house of general hospitality, died on the 20th of Decem- 
ber, after unction and penance." In 1550 it is again 
recorded : " MacWard, of Tyrconnell, a learned poet, a 



690 Martyrs and Confessors. 

superintendent of schools, and a man of great name and 
renown throughout Ireland in his time, who kept a house 
of general hospitality, died." Also, in 1576, we meet the 
entry : " William Oge MacWard, ollamh to O'Donnell in 
poetry, a president of schools, illustrious for his learning 
and knowledge, a patron and supporter of the learned and 
the teachers, died at Druimmor, in Donegal, on the 22d of 
February." Owen MacWard, brother of our Franciscan 
Hugh, was the last of these hereditary bards, and died in 
1609: " Owen MacWard, ollamh to O'Donnell in poetry, 
an intelligent, ingenious man, who kept an open house of 
general hospitality, died at an advanced age, after the 
victory of penance."* He was one of those who shared 
the perils of the flight and exile of the earls, in 1607. 
On the death of O'Donnell, in Rome, the following year, 
he composed a beautiful Irish elegiac poem, addressed 
to Nuala, the sister of the deceased earl, and in it she is 
introduced as weeping alone on St. Peter's Hill over the 
tomb of the illustrious dead : — 

" O woman of the piercing wail, 
Who mournest o'er yon mound of clay, 
With sigh and groan, 
Would God thou wert among the Gael ! 
Thou wouldst not then, from day to day, 
Weep thus alone. 

" Twere long before, around a grave 
In green Tyrconnel, one could find 
This loneliness ; 
Near where Beann-Boirche's banners wave, 
Such grief as thine could ne'er have pined 
Companionless. 

" Red would have been our warriors' eyes, 
Had Roderick found on Sligo's field 
A gory grave • 
No Northern chief would soon arise, 
So sage to guide, so strong to shield, 
So swift to save. 

* O'Donovan's "Annals of the Four Masters." 



Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F. 691 

" Long would Leith-Cuinn have wept, if Hugh 
Had met the death he oft had dealt 
Among the foe ; 
But had our Roderick fallen, too, 
All Erin must, alas ! have felt 

The deadly blow. 

u What do Lsay ? Ah ! woe is me ! 

Already we bewail in vain 

Their fatal fall ! 
And Erin, once the great and free, 

Now vainly mourns her breakless chain 
And iron thrall ! 

"Then, daughter of O'Donnell, dry. 

I Thine overflowing eyes, and turn 

Thy heart aside, 

iFor Adam's race is born to die, 

And sternly the sepulchral urn 

Mocks human pride. 
***** , 

" And Thou, O mighty Lord ! whose ways 
Are far above our feeble minds 

To understand! 
Sustain us in these doleful days, 

And render light the chain that binds 
Our fallen land ! 

" Look down upon our dreary state, • 
And through the ages that may still 
Roll sadly on, 
' Watch Thou o'er hapless Erin's fate, 
And shield, at least from darker ill, 

The blood of Conn !" 

We may here be allowed to remark that, like the subject 
of this chapter, most of the religious of St. Anthony's of 
Louvain, who rendered such services to the history of 
Ireland, were linked by some personal ties with the 
princely families of Tyrconnell and Tyrone. Thus it was 
with Father Mooney, who, whilst guardian of St. An- 
thony's, discharged the duties of tutor to the j^outhful 
earls. Thus, too, MacCaghwell, whose name is men- 
tioned more than once in the pages of our native land, 
had fought under the banner of the earls in the wars 



692 Martyrs and Confessors, 

against Elizabeth, and was subsequently their faithful com- 
panion in exile. O'Sheerin, also, was closely allied by 
blood with the same princely families of Ulster. 

It was in Paris, in 1623, that Father Hugh Ward con- 
tracted a close friendship with another member of his 
order, Father Patrick Fleming. The same ideas that 
quickened the energies of Ward had already found an 
echo in the heart of Fleming ; and when the former made 
known his project of laying the foundations of Irish 
hagiology, by collecting together all the original Acts 
of the Irish saints, and the other monuments connected 
with the history of his native land, Father Fleming at 
once promised to lend his earnest cooperation in thus 
promoting the hallowed glory of Ireland. 

Father Fleming was at this time journeying on to 
Rome, companion of Father MacCaghwell, who was 
Visitor of the order. They travelled, for the most part, 
on foot, and chose for their resting-place, at each stage 
of their journey, some house of their own order, or, 
when none such could be found, some friendly monastery, 
where, by their prayers and learned conversation, they 
repaid the charitable hospitality which was shown them. 
The monastery of Clairvaux renowned for its memories 
of St. Bernard, our own St. Malachy, and so many other 
illustrious ornaments of the Church, was one of the asy- 
lums thus visited by our travellers. Before continuing 
his journey, Father Fleming thus wrote to Father Hugh 
Ward :— 

" My Venerated Father \— 

" 1 arrived at last at this sanctuary of my desire, this 
holy Clairvaux, where would to God I could remain at 
least five days, that thus I might be able to glean some- 
thing from the many manuscripts which enrich it. But 
we have barely stopped two days here, and hence you 
can expect but little from me. I did all that I could, 



Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F. 693 

i »wever, in the short time that was allowed me, and I 
v rote what I now send, leaving the charge to a faithful 
friend to forward the remaining monuments to you, 
should any such be found there. I have not seen the 
archives of the monastery, nor can I see them, for we 
leave this to-morrow, at five o'clock in the morning. I 
was in hopes to find here the letters of St. Malachy, which 
would be important for your work; but have courage, 
dear father, you will get everything that Clairvaux has 
useful for your purpose, for I leave after me here an- 
other myself, in the person of the monk, John Cantwell, 
an Irish priest of great credit and authority with the 
abbot. It was the desire of the abbot that he should be 
prior in another monastery, near Paris, but, by chance, 
through the mercy of God, he was not sent thither, and 
he will not resign his present post. 

" He is a man having the same zeal and desire as our- 
selves ; he has the charge to arrange the books of the 
library, which are now all in confusion, and scattered 
about so that I could find nothing, although I turned 
over several of them. He, however, found, a few days 
ago, when putting the books in order, one work with the 
title, ' Commentary of a Certain Irish Monk on the Rule 
of St. Benedict,' in which many things are introduced 
here and there about Ireland. I did not see the book, be- 
cause one of the religious had brought it to his cell. I 
saw, however, an unpublished history of Britain, in which 
there are some things about Ireland, but which are of 
no importance for your work. There, are also, some 
prophecies — I suppose those of Merlin. I glanced over 
large volumes of the ' Lives of the Saints,' among which 
I found a very full Life of the Abbot of St. Dichuil: 
it is, indeed, a most beautiful Life, and the above-men- 
tioned John will have it copied for you within a few days. 
St. Dichuil, in this Life, styles himself a Scot: from 
which it is certain that he was not an Englishman, and 



694 Martyrs and Confessors, 

hence, as the British Scots do not claim him, he must, 
of course, be an Irish Scot. 

" I saw, also, the ' Miracles of St. Columbanus,' but 
believing- it to be the same work that Messingbam has, 
I did not give any instructions to have it copied. The 
Life of St. Mansuetus, Bishop of Tulle, from the pen of 
some English prior, has been published. 

" It was read and examined by Father Cantwell, at 
whose request that work was undertaken. It proves, at 
great length, that St. Mansuetus was an Irishman, and it 
often expatiates at great length on the praises of Ireland. 
The Bishop of Tulle has already erected a statue of 
St. Mansuetus, with the inscription, ' Sanctus Mansuetus 
Hibernus' (' St. Mansuetus, native of Ireland ' ). Were it 
not for the English prior, he would have styled him a 
Scot. Father Cantwell will soon have a copy of this 
work from his English friend, and will send it to you ; 
and he has promised me that henceforward he will be 
most diligent in our business, and that he will send to you 
everything that he finds. This he can easily effect, for 
he has persons here who, if he so wishes, will copy whole 
treatises for him. Moreover, there is an Irish novice 
here who will not refuse such work : indeed he dare not 
refuse it, for the assistant-master of novices is also an 
Irishman, who will oblige him to do this work, if he shows 
any difficulty about it. 

" Father Cantwell has asked me since, as he says he 
is the matter and you are the form, that I should be 
the bond of union, requesting you to open a mutual and 
frequent correspondence. I am sure he will be most 
diligent in collecting the desired materials, which, if any- 
where, are here most abundant. He is most anxious to 
have the works of Scotus edited by Father MacCaghwell, 
which will be highly prized here, on account of being 
edited by an Irishman. The religious of this parent mon- 
astery are so devotedly attached to the Irish, that the 



Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F. 695 

lord-abbot himself now keeps a catalogue of the saints of 
Ireland in his own private oratory. I therefore earnestly 
and humbly request you to send the wished-for works 
of Scotus, as well for the ornament of the library as for 
the private use of Father Cantwell, and thus he will feel 
greatly indebted to you. 

" You may send your letters through the procurator of 
Clairvaux, who lives in Paris, in the College of the Ber- 
nardines ; but do not disclose any of your projects to him, 
as he is supposed not to be so favorable to us as others. 
When you write to Father Cantwell, promise to send 
the ' Scotus,' and also the work of Father Caghwell on 
the rules of the order, published under the present gen- 
eral. He himself will send instructions with this letter 
how you may most readily communicate with him. 

" My courageous and dearest father, proceed in your 
work with earnestness, for, as I hope, there is no one 
who can keep from your hands all the materials that are 
necessary for you. For the rest, pardon me if I have 
acted with any imprudence in this business ; and whilst 
I depart from this terrestrial paradise, accompany me 
with your prayers. I would wish to find before me in 
Lyons your reply to this letter. Farewell in the Lord, 
and pray for me. 

" Fr. Patrick Fleming." 
" The Feast of St Mark, 1623." 

On his arrival at Lyons he again wrote to Father 
Ward, adding interesting details regarding the various 
memorials of St. Malachy, preserved in some of the 
great French Cistercian monasteries: — 

" I wrote to you from Clairvaux, in hopes of getting 
an answer from you. As this has not come to hand, I 
fear my letter may not have reached you ; and thus it 
will be necessary for you to write to that effect to 
Father John Cantwell, an Irish Monk in Clairvaux. . . . 



6g6 Martyrs and Confessors. 

Ask him about the Lives of SS. Dichuil and Mansuetus, 
and the letters of St. Malachy, though these have not 
been found as yet. Ask him, also, about the mitre of 
St. Malachy, which, according to tradition, was placed 
upon the head of that holy bishop by Pope Innocent ; 
and about the chalice of St. Malachy, which I myself 
used when offering the Holy Sacrifice. The inscrip- 
tions on his monument were sent to you enclosed in my 
former letter. We met another memorial of St. Malachy 
in the monastery of Obrier, which is about ten leagues 
distant from Clairvaux, that is, the cup which he 
brought with him from Ireland, and from which we had 
the privilege of drinking. It is made of wood, and its 
cover or case is more precious than itself, being of 
leather, wonderfully embossed and adorned with inter- 
twinings, according to the Irish style (more Hibernicd), 
of singular ornamentation, generally used on the sheaths 
of oblong instruments. 1 wrote this to you, as Father 
Caghwell thinks it may be interesting to you to know it. 
All the religious drink from this cup only on the feast of 
St. Malachy. Use your own discretion as to adding this 
when writing the saint's life. 

"As yet I have found no manuscripts, because there 
was no time for searching for them. We stopped at the 
Cistercian Monastery, but on the day after our arrival 
we again started on our journey, so that I was not able 
to see the celebrated library of that house, much more 
valuable, as I hear, than that of Clairvaux ; and this I 
readily believe, as it is considered the first and mother 
house of the Cistercian Order, and its abbot should be, 
by right, the General-Superior of the whole order. As 
for the remainder of the journey, I despair of being 
able to transmit anything to you, unless it may please 
God to arrange matters otherwise than at present. 

" For my part I have lost nothing of my fervor ; never- 
theless, I fear that this, my journey, will add but little to 



Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F. 6g7 

your store. But this should not disturb you, for I hope 
to find in Rome what I am unable to search for on the 
road thither. 

" Read the supplement to the ' Chronicle of Philip of 
Bergamo,' where he treats about Ireland, and you will 
find something- useful, perhaps, on the question of the 
nomenclature, if, however, it is our Ireland that he 
speaks of. 

" Direct your letters to Rome, to the care of Father 
Luke Wadding, for I hope we will arrive there before 
your letters can reach. I pray you to send all details 
about the progress of your work ; and I lovingly salute 
Messingham, who, I trust, earnestly continues to labor 
for the glory of our saints, and the honor of our 
country. 

" I commend myself to the prayers of the fathers ; as 
for yours, I feel quite assured of them. I shall write no 
more ; and even all this 1 have written, not as a matter 
of any urgency, but merely to discharge my duty to- 
ward you. God grant that you may be able to read 
what my stupid pen has written. Farewell in Christ, 
my dear father, and be not forgetful of one who is ever 
mindful of you. 

" Fr. Patrick Fleming." 
" Lyons, %th May, 1623. 

Before the month of September, 1623, Father Hugh 
Ward proceeded to Louvain, to teach theology in the 
College of St. Anthony. A little later he was chosen 
guardian of that convent ; and thus a wider field was 
opened to him for promoting his cherished object of the 
glory of the saints of Ireland. During his sojourn in 
France he had visited the libraries of Paris, of Rouen, of 
Harfleur and of Nantes. In Belgium he also gathered in 
a rich literary store ; but it was in Ireland principally that 
reseaches should be made for the surviving monuments 



6q8 Martyrs and Confessors. 

of her early history. Here Providence came to his aid. 
" Whilst he was guardian of Louvain," writes Father de 
Buck, " there came to the gates of St. Anthony's a man 
advanced in years, who knew no Latin, but asked to be 
admitted to the habit of the lay brothers of the Fran- 
ciscan Order. This was Michael O'Clery, whose name 
will be forever dear to the archaeologists and historians 
of Ireland. Born about the year 1580, in the county of 
Donegal, he was an antiquarian by profession, and ranked 
amongst his colleagues as one of the most skilled in Celtic 
archaeology. Father Ward asked permission to have 
O'Clery appointed his own assistant, and the permission 
was readily accorded. He soon saw that Ireland would 
be a better field of labor, for one so skilled in Irish litera- 
ture, than Belgium. 

" The superiors of the order came to a like decision, and 
soon the antiquarian Brother was sent back to his coun- 
try, commissioned to search out and transcribe the Lives 
of the Irish Saints, and all other documents connected 
with the history of the kingdom. As many of these 
records of our early ages were written in the ancient 
Gaelic, no one was better suited for such a task than 
Brother Michael." 

It will suffice here to cite a few passages of a letter 
of Dr. Rothe, Bishop of Ossory, giving some details con- 
nected with that learned explorer of our early monuments. 
It is addressed, as follows, to Father Hugh Ward : — 

•* The 30th January, 1628. 
" Worthie Friend : — 

" I need not make any relation of the trivial occur- 
rents now current in this poor realm, nor particularize 
anything touching myself, but remit you to the bearer, 
who will punctually inform you of all. As I was teach- 
ing at Cashel, upon your patron's festival day, there I 
met your Brother Clery, who made a collection of more 



Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F. 699 

than three or four hundred Lives. I gave him the few- 
Lives I had collected, and sent him to Ormond, part of my 
diocese, to write there for a time, from whence he prom- 
ised to come to Chewmond (z. e., Thomond), where I 
undertook to get man) 7 things for him, but he came not 
since ; soon I do expect his coming ; he shall be welcome 
truly to me. I have some little alms to be sent to your 
house, but can find no way this year to convey the same to 
you, or send any supply to my brother, because the ways 
are stopped. I understood by one of your letters, written 
long ago, that some false informations were given of me, 
for my partiality against religious orders, which was 
most calumnious, as experience taught, and ever will 
teach, during my life ; but I cannot sufficiently give you 
thanks for your advice and care of me and mine, assur- 
ing you your will was and will always be done, in that 
behalf, as you will see in time. 

" I commend the bearer to you, who is my special 
friend, and one of yours, worthy, for his parentage and 
behaviour, of any furtherance. 

" Remember my love and humble service to the two 
noble gentlemen of Barnewall and McFrihill. 

" I hear many are suitors for my place, and I pray God 
to rid me of the pains thereof, if it will tend to His own 
glory, and the common good : otherwise, benedicta ejus in 
omnibus fiat voluntas. ... I long to hear from yourself, 
and when you intend to come for Ireland. I know you 
heard, long ago, from Mr. Francis Brian, how Mr. Wil- 
liam Kelly died of late, to my grief. I rest without end. 
" Yours to be commanded, 

" David Rothe." 
"To the worthy and much respected friend, 
" Mr. Heagh Warde, Louvain." 

However, the libraries of France, Italy and Ireland did 
not satisfy this indefatigable man. He wished, also, to 



700 Martyrs and Confessors. 

be enriched with the spoils of Germany, as we learn 
from the following letter of the celebrated Benedictine, 
Lessing, who thus writes to Ward, from the monastery 
of St. Hubert, on the 23d of August, 1629 : — 

"The Peace of Xt. 
" My Reverend Father jn Xt :— 

" When two of your religious lately made a pilgrim- 
age to our monastery of St. Hubert, one of them requested 
me to have some Lives of Saints copied by one of our 
brothers from a manuscript of the monastery. This copy, 
faithfully and accurately made from the said manuscript, 
which is entitled " Vitce Sanctorum" I now send to you., 
I trust your reverence may accept my good will, and 
cause the Holy Sacrifice to be offered up by your relig- 
ious for the good of our order; and may God grant His 
protection and blessing to you. 

" Your servant in Xt. 

" Fr. Benedict Lessing." 
" The Monastery of St. Hubert, 

" The 10th of the Calends of September, 1629." 

A marginal note adds that the Lives of SS. Fursey, 
Brigid and Cadroe, with a fragment of a Life of St. 
Patrick, accompanied this letter. All these Lives were 
subsequently made use of by Colgan, in his "Acta Sanc- 
torum ; " and this greatest of our hagiologists regarded, as 
singularly important and venerable for its antiquity, the 
valuable manuscript from which they were transcribed. 

Whilst Ward was thus occupied enlisting the services 
of skilful and devoted men to collect the scattered monu- 
ments of Irish history, he himself was busily engaged 
in preparing for the press several works which were 
closely connected with the same subject. The following 
treatises on which he was engaged, are mentioned by 
0'Sheerin:« — 



Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F. 701 

1. "On the Ancient Names of Ireland " {De Nomenclatures 
Hibernian). 

2. " On the Condition and Political Development of 
Society in Ireland " (De Statu et Processu Veteris in Hiber- 
nia Reipublicce ). 

3. " On the Privileges of St. Patrick " (Anagraphe Mira- 
bilium Sancti Patricii). 

4. "An Inquiry Concerning the Pilgrimage of St. Ur- 
sula" (Investigatio Expeditionis Ursulance). 

5. "An Hiberno-Latin Martyrology, Compiled from 
the Ancient Martyrologies of Ireland " (Martyrologium 
ex Multis Vetustis Latino-Hibernicum ). 

6. " The Life of St. Rumold, Bishop of Mechlin " (Sancti 
Rumoldi Vita). 

The fame of Father Hugh Ward was soon wide-spread 
throughout Belgium. Letters were addressed to him 
from all parts, proposing queries connected with the 
saints of Ireland ; and among his correspondents we find 
the renowned Father Bollandus, from whom the great 
Jesuit collection of the Lives of the Saints derives its 
name. 

One of the letters thus addressed to him is particularly 
interesting. It was written by Father Augustine Wich- 
mann, of the Premonstratensian Order, and dated from 
Tungerloo, the feast of St. Waldetrude, in 1628. It is 
addressed to Father Hugh Ward, Order of St. Francis, 
guardian of the College of St. Anthony, in Louvain : — 

" With both hands I have received, and then I have 
lovingly kissed, the bundle of your most learned remarks 
on the Life of St. Dympna. 

" Our people of Brabant will be astounded, as well as 
I, when they will receive, through your kindness, these 
wonderful details in the Life of St. Dympna; and would 
to heaven that manuscripts regarding her deeds, which 
are preserved in your nation, should soon be placed 
within our reach! O Dympna! hear my prayer, for it 



7<32 Martyrs and Confessors* 

is directed to promote thy glory ; and thou, O angel, 
who art named Accelera ! hasten this boon for me." 

He then propounds some of his own views about the 
Life of St. Dympna, and, among other things, remarks 
that she could not have been the superior of a convent, 
as, according to the tradition of Gheel, she was only 
fifteen years of age at the time she suffered martyr- 
dom : " Therefore," he thus continues, " your conjecture 
seems to me to be the most probable, that is, that her 
staff, which is preserved, is not an abbatial crosier, but a 
staff of pilgrimage, like that of St. Oda, which was brought 
from Mount Garganum, as her Life, which we possess, 
records: for she passed by that mountain, when journey- 
ing from your country to Rome." 

From other remarks of Father Wichmann we glean 
that it was Ward's opinion that St. Dympna made a pil- 
grimage to Rome ; that her martyrdom took place about 
the year 480, and that the name of Gheel was derived 
from the two Gaelic saints, SS. Dympna and Gerabern, 
who rendered that spot so illustrious by miracles, that a 
city soon sprung up round their shrines. He adds : " I 
have nothing to oppose to your explanation of the name 
Gheel ; but I would wish to learn from you, can any simi- 
lar explanation be given to the name Tammale, by which 
the town is called, where they resided before their mar- 
tyrdom." He further gives the following interesting 
particulars regarding St. Oda, and her companion, St. 
Hilvaris : " I don't know whether your reverence has 
ever verified from other sources the statement made by 
Gazet, in his 'Ecclesiastical History of Belgium,' written 
in French, wherein, in the chapter on the saints of Bois- 
le-Duc, he writes regarding the Irish saint, St. Hilvaris: 
* St. Hilvaris, virgin, the companion of St. Oda, founded a 
collegiate church in the town of Beca, which, from her, is 
called Hilvaris-Beca.' This is also the constant tradition 
there. The town is situated in the middle of our 



Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F. 703 

Campania, which was the native place of the late famous 
theologian, Martin Becanus." Twelve years later, Father 
Wichmann again wrote to Louvain, seeking further details 
about St. Dympna. His letter was no longer addressed to 
Hugh Ward, who had passed to his reward, but to Father 
John Colgan, the worthy successor of Ward as Irish 
hagiologist in St Anthony's. He states in his letter that 
the Life of St. Dympna, by F. Cameracensis, was the most 
ancient preserved in Gheel, and was compiled in the 
thirteenth century from the tradition of the inhabitants, 
and from paintings and various monuments collected in 
several places. This is fortunately preserved among the 
Colgan fragments at St. Isidore's, in Rome, a fly-sheet 
containing a rough draft of a portion of Colgan's letter 
in answer to the above, and dated 18th September, 1640. 
It adds not a little to our scanty information regarding 
that great saint and martyr of our early Church. He 
first remarks that the father of St. Dympna should not 
be styled monarch of all Ireland, but rather dynast, or 
inferior prince ; many of whom received the title of kings, 
and some of whom, it is probable, persevered, for a time, 
in their pagan vices and superstitions. 

He then continues as follows : — 

u That the matter may be more accurately illustrated, 
I premise four remarks : 

" 1. That Dympna, or Dimhna, is generally written 
Damhnad in Irish, although, according to the origin of 
the word, we should rather write it Damhna. 

" 2. That in Oirghialla, which is a very large district in 
Ulster, in Ireland, there is still preserved, through rever- 
ence for this saint, a celebrated memorial, called BachulU 
Damhnad, i. e., staff of St. Dympna, which is held in the 
highest honor and veneration ; and when any one of this 
territory, whether he be prince or peasant, wishes to 
affirm anything on oath, he is invariably sworn on this 
bachull, as a most inviolable tessera of truth. It is un^ 



704 Martyrs and Confessors. 

certain whether it was used as a pastoral staff of abbess, 
or as a staff of pilgrimage to foreign parts ; but now it is 
covered with gems and gold, and held in the highest 
honor. 

" 3. That in different parts of Ireland there still remain 
four churches dedicated to one or more saints of the 
name of Dympna. The first and principal church* is situ- 
ated in the aforesaid province of Oirghialla, in the dis- 
trict of Sliaabh-Beatha ; it is called Teagh-Damhnad, i. e., 
the house of St. Dympna, and was formerly the burial- 
place of the princes and dynasts of Oirghialla (who in 
olden times were called by the generic name of kings), 
and in it, to our own times, was preserved the above 
staff of St. Dympna. 

" In it, also, the festival of St. Dympna is celebrated 
with the greatest solemnity, as the feast of the patron not 
only of that place, but of the whole province ; it is not 
kept, however, on the 15th of May, as in Gheel, but on 
the 13th of June, on which day a public fair is held, as an 
occasion of special celebration. 

" The second church is about five miles distant from the 
former, and situated in the same district, on the side of 
Mount Beatha, and is called Atchumairc, i. e., the ford 
of refuge ; and as a large portion of the mountain for- 
merly belonged to this church, the saint seems to have 
derived from it her characteristic designation, for she 
is generally known as St. Dympna of Mount Beatha. 
The third church is situated at a distance of about twenty 
miles thence, in the town and county of Louth, in the 
district of Maghera Oirghialla, i. e., the plain of Oirghi- 
alla ; and at a short distance from this church there is 
another chapel which, according to tradition, was dedi- 
cated to Saint Gerebern, and tradition has it that it was 
there St. Gerebern instructed our St. Dympna in science 
and in religion. 

" The fourth church is that called Kill-Alga, in the 



Father Hugh Ward, 0. 5. F. 705 

county of Meath, half way between Trim and Athboy, 
being distant about three miles from each of these 
towns. 

" I have not, as yet, been able to discover on what day 
the feast of the saint is kept in these churches. 

" 4. The fourth point to be held in mind is this : that two, 
if not three, holy virgins of the name of Dympna are 
commemorated by our hagiologists and other historians 
as renowned for their birth and sanctity. The first 
St. Dympna had, for her father, St. Ronan, the son of 
Nennedh, and for mother, Dublacha, who was descended 
from the celebrated family of the O'Neils : about her and 
her sisters, see, at the 13th of November, the notes on the 
Life of St. Lassair, who was her sister. As, however, St. 
Ronan, the father of these holy virgins, was not a pagan, 
but was a Christian from his infancy, and, as he advanced 
in years, was remarkable for his sanctity, and after the 
death of his wife was chosen bishop, and was celebrated 
for miracles during the lifetime of his daughters, as ap- 
pears from the Life of St. Lassair, it is manifest that St. 
Dympna of Gheel, who was beheaded by her pagan and 
impious father, cannot have been St. Ronan's daughter. 

" The second St. Dympna is called St. Dympna of 
Mount Beatha ; of whose father's family, as well as of 
her mother and holy brothers, we are better informed 
than of her father himself, whose name is passed over in 
silence by our writers." 

After this important passage, another short paragraph 
is added (which, however, is in great part erased), as 
follows : " Her mother's name was Bronach, the daughter 
of Milcho, with whom St. Patrick lived as a slave for 
many years." (See JSngus Keledeus.) 

This is all that is preserved of the letter of Colgan. 
The Mount Beatha here referred to is the modern Slieve 
Beagh, which is situated in the county of Tyrone, near 
its junction with Fermanagh and Monaghan. Near it, 



706 Martyrs and Confessors. 

to the southeast, is the ancient Teagh-Damhnat giving 
name to the modern parish of Tedavnet. The bachull 
of St. Dympna is spoken of by Petrie, as forming part 
of his valuable collection, and the ornamental work is de- 
scribed by him as not later than the tenth century. He 
gives two illustrations from it in his " Round Towers " 
(page 318). As regards the town and whole districts 
of Louth, special devotion seems to have been there 
shown to St. Dympna, even to a late period. 

In the sixteenth century, as Hanmer writes in his 
chronicles, her memory was vividly cherished there ; and 
it was supposed that her father had been some dynast 
of that territory. 

Colgan also writes, in the printed volume of his "Acta 
Sanctorum " (page 713), that " a most celebrated virgin of 
the name of Damhna, sprung from Oirghialla, is vener- 
ated to the present day as the common patron of all the 
territory of Oirghialla." The Kill- Alga mentioned above 
is now known as Kildalkey. It still gives name to a 
parish situated at a few miles from Trim. Mr. Donovan, 
who examined this district in connection with the Ordi- 
nance Survey, reported that St. Damhnat, i. e., Dympna, 
was its patron saint. In the " Annals of the Four Mas- 
ters," he thus writes: "Kill-Dealga, Anglicized Kildalkey, 
was the name of an old church, now totally destroyed, 
giving name to a parish situated between the parish of 
Trim, in East Meath, and the boundary of West Meath " 
(page 320). He adds that the festival of the saint was 
formerly kept there on the 15th of May.- Though no 
vestige remains of the ancient church, a holy well near 
the site still retains the name of Tobar-Damhnata, i. e., 
St. Dympna's Well. 

As an appendix to Hugh Ward's Life of St. Rumold, 
some scattered poems were inserted, composed by him, 
at leisure intervals, in honor of his special patrons. Two 
of these short poems are in praise of St. Dympna. 



Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F. 707 

The Life of St. Rumold is the only published work of 
Hugh Ward ; and it was not till many years after his 
death that even this was given to the press by his friend 
and companion, O'Sheerin. Nevertheless, it is justly 
described by the learned Bollandist, de Buck, as indis- 
putably one of the most erudite books for which we are 
indebted to Irish archaeology. 

Hugh Ward engaged in this work at the request of 
the Archbishop of Mechlin, who, with his clergy, was 
most desirous of having the details of the Life of the 
great patron of that see illustrated by one so well versed 
in the antiquities of Ireland. It was completed in the 
year 163 1, but its publication was deferred, in the hope 
that some further particulars connected with St. Rumold 
might be gleaned from the documents which were then so 
zealously sought for by O'Clery, and other members of the 
order, in Ireland. Ward, however, was cut off by death 
before these documents could be transmitted to Louvain. 
It was the intention of Colgan to insert the whole work, 
with additional notes, in his " Acta Sanctorum" on the 1st 
of July ; but he, too, was summoned to his reward before 
accomplishing his design. 

Hence it was that O'Sheerin, on being appointed 
hagiologist of the order, resolved to begin his labors by 
the publication of this work of Ward, lest, as he writes 
in the preface, "/^should be forgotten who had begun 
these studies, and had collected a great deal of matter, 
with much toil and industry ; or lest it should be sup- 
posed that'nothing had been achieved by all his toil." 

The few and unfinished remarks made by Ward, 
regarding the family of St. Rumold, show how accurate 
was his knowledge of the antiquities of our country. 
He conjectures that the Latinized name, Rumoldus, cor- 
responds with the Celtic Rumond, which is often met 
with in the annals of Ireland : thus, Rumond Duagh is 
commemorated as connected by blood with St. Kieran 



yoS Martyrs and Confessors, 

of Saigher, and as the father of many saints ; Rumond 
O'Haedhagain, Abbot of Clonmacnoise, is mentioned in 
978 ; Rumond MacCathusach, Bishop of Clonard, in 919 ; 
another Rumond, " exceedingly versed in chronology 
and poetry," in 742, at which time, indeed, the patron of 
Mechlin also flourished ; but Ward adds that this entry 
of our annals probably refers to another St. Rumond, 
who lived at the time, and is referred to by St. ^Engus, in 
his tract on the " The Mothers of the Saints of Erin," 
where Funechta is styled " the mother of St. Cormac, 
Bishop of Athtruim, and of SS. Baithellach, Ossan and 
Rumond." In the ancient Life, St. Rumold is said to have 
been born in a city called Guervia. 

This gives occasion to Ward to remark that the 
Scottish writers were unable to find any place in Scot- 
land corresponding with this name ; but in Ireland, he 
adds, we have Sliebh-Guaire, in Breffny, " which was 
formerly part of Connaught, but is now a county in 
Ulster ; " also, the more celebrated Durlas-Guaire, i. e, y 
the fortress of Guaire, King of Connaught, situated nine 
miles from Galway, and four miles from the see of Kil- 
macduagh, the royal palace of Prince Guaire, who was 
renowned for his* munificence and hospitality, formerly 
marked this spot ; ihen, again, Gort-insi-Guaire, the 
hereditary property of the O'Shaugnessys, only two or 
three miles distant from Durlas-Guaire ; a fourth town 
situated between Dublin and Wexford (thirty -three miles 
from the former, and twenty-three from the latter), in 
the townland of Kilmantan, is still called Guaire-an-Ri, 
i. e., Royal Guaire. It was formerly the residence of 
the Dublin princes, and is now the seat of Viscount 
Esmond ; in fine, Rath-Guaire, a village of Westmeath, 
situated twenty-five miles from Dublin, and five miles 
from Mullingar : " It was once a noble palace, as its 
ruins still attest." It is not easy to decide which of 
these places is the city mentioned in the Life of St. 



Father Hugh Ward, 0. S. F. 709 

Rumold ; but as it states that the royal residence of the 
father of the saint was situated there, we may, with some 
probability, look to Guaire-an-Ri as the birthplace of St. 
Rumold. It is worthy of remark that, in the beginning 
of the eighth century, our annals mention a prince of 
the Hy-Kinnsellagh, called Dathi, which, as Ward fully 
proves, was the name of the father of our saint. 

The most important part, however, of the work of 
Ward is an Essay on the Ancient Scotia, in which he dis- 
plays the greatest learning, and proves that that name 
originally belonged solely to Ireland, and that it was 
only at a comparatively recent date it became appropri- 
ated to the northern part of Britain. 

In this essay he shows himself intimately acquainted 
with all the then accessible materials of Irish history, 
and he brings forward many passages from manuscript 
Lives of our early saints. In his incidental references 
he remarks that the hymn in honor of St. Columbanus, 
beginning " Nostri solemnis sceculi," which by some is 
attributed to Jonas, and by others to Notker Balbulus, is 
marked, in the ancient manuscripts of Bobbio, as com- 
posed by St. Gall, the holy companion of St. Columbanus. 

At page 152 he states that in the sacristy of Namur was 
preserved the inscription, " St. Forannan, an Irish arch- 
bishop, and first abbot of the monastery of Walciodo- 
rum, is enshrined there, illustrious by his many miracles;" 
and, after a few other remarks, he adds : " These things I 
myself copied in Walciodorum, in 1626." Treating of the 
religious rule followed by the Irish saints, he writes (p. 64) 
that there were at least twelve great monastic founders 
in our early Church, each of whom composed a rule for 
his disciples : " I myself have fragments," he adds, " of 
these various Rules, and they are referred to in the Lives 
of our Saints, written in the earliest times. Thus, the 
ancient narrative of St. Molua's life makes mention of 
his Rule, which was brought to St. Gregory the Great by 



yio Martyrs and Confessors. 

the holy abbot, Dagan, and it was so admired by that 
great pontiff that he exclaimed : ' Molua has raised, even 
unto heaven, a safe barrier for his followers, to preserve 
them from every assault of worldly wickedness.' " 

At page 105, speaking of the beautiful discourse of 
Vernulaeus on the Irish saints in Belgium, he states that 
it was delivered on the occasion of the consecration of 
Dr. Fleming, Archbishop of Dublin, in 1623, in the 
public acadamy of Louvain, in the presence of four 
archbishops, and a select number of academicians, who, 
in their poems and various compositions, declared that 
" Belgium was indebted to Ireland, and particularly to 
Dublin, for St. Rumold and other saints, but now repaid 
in part this debt, by sending to Dublin, as archbishops, the 
superior and lecturer of theology at St. Anthony's." At 
page 299 he also mentions that Edward Geraldine, con- 
nected with the noble families of Kildare and Desmond, 
and born in Ireland, held the post of sergeant-major in 
the Irish Legion in Belgium, and subsequently attained 
the rank of colonel and count of the Holy Empire, in 
Germany, but died at Heidelberg, in 1626, and was in- 
terred in the Franciscan church of that town. These few 
instances will sufjice to show how important, even in its 
incidental references, is the Life of St. Rumold. 

The last event that we meet with, connected with 
Father Ward's life, is the visitation of the houses of his 
order in the province of St. Andrew, in Belgium, which he 
held in 1633, by special authority from the Papal Nuncio, 
as well as by commission from the Franciscan general. 
The archives of St. Isidore's preserve some minutes of 
his report on the various allegations that were made to 
him, and on the true causes which created disturbance 
among the brethren of that province. From it we learn 
that he proceeded to Lisle on the 1st of July, 1633, held 
a consultation with the nuncio, at Brussels, on the 28th of 
the same month ; returned a second time to Lisle, on the 



Father Hugh Ward, O. S. F. 711 

6th of August, and finally communicated the result of his 
investigations to the nuncio, on the 18th of September, 
1633, and, two days later, to the commissary -general of 
his order. This was one of the last important missions 
intrusted to Hugh Ward. 

Two years later, a tedious and painful disease brought 
his early career to a premature close, on the 8th of No- 
vember, 1635. 



FATHER LUKE WADDING. 

A. D. 1657. 

Author of " Scriptores Ordinum Minorum," "Annals of the Friars Minors," 
and Founder of St. Isidore's College, Rome. 

Father Luke Wadding was a native of the city of 
Waterford. He was born on the 8th of October, 1588. 
His father was a merchant, in wealthy circumstances ; 
his mother, sister to Peter Lombard, the Catholic Pri- 
mate of Ireland. An elder brother, Matthew, superin- 
tended his preliminary studies, until he was of an age to 
be sent abroad for their completion. In 1603, he was 
placed under the tuition of the Irish Jesuits, in Lisbon. 
He graduated, finally, in the venerable University of 
Coimbra. 

In his seventeenth year he commenced a novitiate ac- 
cording to the rules of the Friars Minors of St. Francis, 
and at twenty-five was ordained by John Emanuel, 
Bishop of Visco. 

As a priest, the first field of his labors was the convent 
church of Liria, in whose pulpit he preached with great 
success, " in the language of the country." From Liria, 
he was called by the University of Salamanca, famous all 
over Europe for its learning and munificence, where he 
was successively installed as master of the students and 
as professor of divinity. Here the controversy of the 
Immaculate Conception was strenuously urged to a 
determination, and by none more so than by Wadding. 
In 1618, Philip III resolved on sending a deputation 
for this purpose to Rome, at the head of which was 
& Trejo, Bishop of Carthagena. Wadding was appointed 
theologian to the embassy, and he set out, with the rest, 
from Madrid for the Eternal City. 



Father Luke Wadding. 713 

Arrived in Rome, the deputation took up its abode in 
the palace of Cardinal a Trejo, brother to the bishop. 
The latter, after various interviews with the College of 
Cardinals, effected his purpose, and all but Wadding 
returned rejoicingly to Spain. He had resolved to remain 
in Rome. Here was to him a Avhole w T orld of labor, and 
in the centre of Christendom, where the chiefs of the 
Church had their home. Here, in innumerable archives, 
were mouldering manuscripts, passing daily into dust, 
and thus dissolving the labors of many a laborious brain. 
It would, indeed, be a shame if, while Florence and all 
Italy were raving, in their Hellenic fever, of Plato, and 
Aristotle, and Sophocles, the pious writings of Christian 
saints and fathers, with which the city abounded, should 
know no revival. He beheld herein a great literary 
province stretched out before him, but one totally untrod- 
den and unused by man : he, therefore, resolved not to 
return to Salamanca. 

The success of the mission of the Immaculate Con- 
ception had made his name extensively known in Cath- 
olic countries. From various religious bodies in Italy 
and Spain he received letters of thanks for his great 
exertions, and full of admiration at his learning. 

Angelo de Paz, a deceased brother of St Peter's con- 
vent, had left behind him several tracts of value and 
learning, which Wadding collected, and published in suc- 
cessive volumes, in the years 1621, 1623 and 1625, succes- 
sively ; in 1623 he also published an edition of the works 
of St. Francis, the founder of his order, with original 
annotations. In 1624 he edited two separate works on 
" Biblical Criticism," which had hitherto lain unknown: 
the one from the pen of St. Anthony of Lisbon, the 
other composed by an anonymous Irish Franciscan, styled 
Thomas Hibernicus. 

Wadding's industry now took an historical direction. 
He resolved on writing the " Annals " of his wide-spread 



714 Martyrs and Confessors. 

order, from its institution to his own time. It proposed 
to inweave the records of its thousands of saints and 
doctors, its missionaries and authors. The design was 
gigantic, but the giant's load is light to the giant's 
arm. Yet he took twenty-six years to bring out his eight 
tomes of the "Annals," — from 1628 to 1654. 

In 1637 he published a "Life of Thomasius, Patriarch 
of Alexandria; and in 1641, that of St. James of Pice- 
nium. In 1650, he wrote the Life of the Franciscan, 
Gaullensis ; and, in 1657, " A Memoir of Anselm, Bishop 
of Lucca." 

In 1625, when but seven years in Rome, he founded, on 
the ruins of a Spanish convent, dedicated to St. Isidore, 
patron of Madrid, the Irish College, which bore and 
Dears the same name. In 1628 he succeeded in inducing 
Cardinal Loudovisius to establish a secular Irish college. 
In 1630 he was elected procurator of the Franciscans at 
Rome, and in 1645 he was vice-commissary of his order. 

The ruews of the Irish rising of 1641 had no sooner 
reached Wadding, than he exerted himself to procure 
foreign cooperation for the confederates. The " con- 
federate Catholics," aware of his anxiety T for their success, 
appointed him, in 1642, their agent at Rome, at the same 
time formally thanking him for his " past zeal and ser- 
vices." Soon after, when Urban VIII, of the family of 
Barberini, was raised to the Papacy, his influence still 
increased, and he obtained the appointment, or caused 
it to be rendered operative, of Nicholas Rinnuncinni, 
Archbishop of Fernio, as nuncio to Ireland. 

The mission of Rinnuncinni failed. While he was in 
Ireland, the sword of Aodh O'Neil came into the posses- 
sion of Father Wadding ; he transmitted it, by the Dean 
of Fernio, to the nuncio, who presented it to Owen Roe 
O'Neil. 

In 1645, the confederates sent Mr. Richard Belling, 
as their ambassador, to Rome, to congratulate Urban on 



Father Luke Wadding. 715 

his elevation to the Papacy. In 1646 the confederates 
petitioned his Holiness that he might raise him to the 
dignity of cardinal. 

After the return of the luckless nuncio to Italy, the 
connection between Ireland and Rome ceased to be 
official, and Wadding's duties, as Irish agent, became 
less numerous and pressing. The intervals of his leisure 
he again turned to literary account. 

In his declining years he became, for a second time, 
president of St. Isidore's College. Here he had gathered 
about him Irish professors, whose names are distin- 
guished in the Church literature of their age. In 1650 
he was seized with an illness, from the debilitating effect 
of which his constitution did not recover. He lived on 
for seven years more, suffering in body, yet active and 
industrious in mind. On the 18th of October, 1657, he 
was relieved by death. His funeral was solemnly cele- 
brated ; his grave is in St. Isidore's, and over it a tomb, 
raised to his memory by a noble Roman, who was his 
friend through life : Hercules Rocconii. It bears a brief 
inscription in Latin. 



AN IRISH MARTYR 

AT 

TIEN-TSIN, CHINA. 



A. D. 1870. 

Although the murder of this saintly Sister of Chanty 
and daughter of Ireland is not attributable to English 
persecution, yet it is deemed not amiss to insert here a 
short account of her life and death. It will serve to 
show that the ancient heroism of Ireland's saints still 
lives in the hearts and souls of the present generation. 

The 2 1 st of June, 1870, will forever be memorable in 
the Christian annals of China ; and the blood of many 
martyrs which, on that day, flowed in the city of Tien- 
Tsin, gives promise that a rich harvest will soon smile 
upon that dreary wilderness. Such days of martyrdom 
are days of glory for the Church of Christ, and are sure 
to usher in the triumph of the holy cause which the 
heroes of religion thus seal with their blood. 

It is a privilege for Ireland, that one of her chosen 
daughters was included in the glorious array of that 
21st of June, as one of those ten Sisters of Charity who, 
fired with the zeal and fervor of their great founder, St. 
Vincent de Paul, welcomed on that day the pagan exe- 
cutioners of Tien-Tsin, and, offering their lives as a 
holocaust to God, attained their heavenly crown. 

* "Irish Ecclesiastical Record." 



An Irish Martyr at Tien-Tsin, China, 71 7 

Sister Louise was born in the parish of St. Mary's, 
Clonmel county, Tipperary, in the year 1835. She 
showed, from infancy, a great disposition for works of 
charity, and felt strongly inclined to devote herself to 
religion and the service of the poor. After her early 
studies, she went to complete her education to the Con- 
vent of St. Mary's, Kingstown, where her memory is 
still cherished, because of her piety and virtues. In the 
year 1854, she became a postulant of the Sisters of 
Charity, at their hospital in Amiens, France, and received 
the habit of the Congregation, after the usual novitiate 
in the parent-house, Rue du Bac, Paris. The first field 
of her charity was Drogheda, where she spent five years 
of loving labor amidst the poor of that town. Her only 
pain was that she had not adequate resources to meet 
the pressing demands of the numbers who appeared as 
objects of her devoted charity. From Drogheda Sister 
Louise was sent to the house of the Sisters at Hereford, 
the difficulties and privations of which mission were a 
suitable preparation for her future sacrifice. 

The Jesuit father (at Shanghai, in China) asked for 
some Daughters of Charity to take charge and direction 
of a hospital about to be established there ; and Sister 
Louise, having frequently made known to her superiors 
her readiness and desire to labor in any distant mission, 
was selected to join other sisters from Italy, Algiers 
and France, for this good work. 

Sister Louise was very useful in the hospital at 
Shanghai. Being the only Sister able to speak English, 
her time and exertions were in constant demand in 
laboring for the English, Irish and American sailors 
and soldiers. These recipients of her kind and untiring 
attention will long remember her who so tenderly 
nursed them when suffering in a far-distant land. 

The last work in which Sister Louise was engaged, 
was the Institute of the Immaculate Conception at 



718 Martyrs and Confessors. 

Pekin : an orphanage for the support and education of 
poor children rescued from death, when abandoned by 
their Chinese mothers, in consequence of the inhuman 
and savage objection the Chinese have to rear female 
children. 

From this house Sister Louise proceeded, in company 
with her superioress, as far as Tien-Tsin, when an 
adorable Providence arranged that she should prepare 
to sacrifice her life in her loving Master's service. She 
was on her way to Europe when, making a short stay 
at Tien-Tsin, she went to visit the Catholic church, and, 
praying before the statue of our Lady of Victories, she 
felt an irresistible impulse to request of her superioress 
to take another companion to Europe, and to leave her 
to her beloved work among" the Chinese. 

The superioress could not fail to see in her earnestness 
and entreaty the work of grace, and, in accordance with 
her request, took another with her to Europe, leaving 
the Irish Sister to receive her early crown. 

With renewed zeal Sister Louise devoted herself at 
Tien-Tsin to the orphans and the hospitals, from the 
end of March to the 21st of June, when, with her heroic 
companions, she lost her life in the cause of charity. 

During the first month of 1870, the city of Tien-Tsin was 
a favorite resort of the leading enemies of the Christian 
name ; and for some time previous to the day of massacre 
rumors were industriously set afloat that the Sisters of 
Charity and the priests took special delight in tearing 
out the eyes and hearts of Chinese children, which were 
afterward used for medicinal purposes. The hatred of 
the Chinese mob was gradually fanned into a flame ; and 
at length, on the 21st of June, it burst forth in all its fury 
against the Catholic institutions of Tien-Tsin. 

The French consul, seeing the gathering storm, went, 
on the morning of that day, to solicit the aid of the 
government authorities, in guarding from violence the 



An Irish Martyr at Tien-Tsin, Cliina. 719 

foreign settlers in the city. On his return from the 
governor, he himself and his companion were brutally 
assailed, and cut to pieces by the mob. " But," continues 
the correspondent of the Times, writing from Shanghai, 
on the 8th of July, " dreadful as is this death, the details 
are more horrible of the massacre of the priests and 
Sisters of Charity, which followed the attack on the mis- 
sion premises. It is not clear whether this occurred 
before or after the attack on the French consul, but the 
two occurrences were very nearly simultaneous. The 
establishments of the Lazarists, the Jesuits and the Sisters 
of Charity were burnt, and their inmates murdered with 
circumstances of brutal atrocity. Women, whose onlv 
fault was to have devoted their lives to do good, who had 
earned the respect of the foreign community at Shanghai 
(where they were known and appreciated), as well as at 
Tien-Tsin, were stripped, their bodies ripped open, their 
breasts cut off, their eyes scooped out, and their remains 
cast into their own burning houses. All the native 
inmates of the missions were also, it is said, burned to 
death : the children only were saved, several hundred in 
number ; and even of these, between thirty or forty were 
unknowingly suffocated in a large cave, where they had 
taken refuge at the first approach of the mob. The 
body of a priest, since recovered, is so mutilated as to 
be hardly recognizable ; and two others are missing, sup- 
posed to have been also burnt." 

One of the devoted Sisters who had left Tien-Tsin only 
a few days before this dreadful massacre, writing from 
Ning-Po. on the 3d of July, to the superioress of the order 
in Paris, details some circumstances connected with this 
dreadful tragedy : " The courier of to-day bears to you 
intelligence which will overwhelm your maternal heart 
with affliction: for some days we were in great anxiety 
about our dear mission at Tien-Tsin, but we were in hopes 
that the rumors were exaggerated, and that the storm 



720 Martyrs and Confessors. 

would soon cease. The events of the 2 1 st of June proved 
how well founded were the fears that were entertained. 
On that day the storm of persecution burst forth in all 
its fury against the Catholics at Tien-Tsin. The mission- 
house, the Catholic church, the consulate, the house of 
our Sisters, were all reduced to ashes. Our ten Sisters 
were massacred, and then their bodies were thrown into 
the flames of their own burning houses. M. Chevrier 
and M. Ou (a Chinese priest) were put to death, and 
their bodies cast into the river. The French consul and 
many other Catholics were also massacred. It was a 
storm of fiendish fury. We are told that they even tore 
out the eyes and hearts of our Sisters, and this would be 
explained by the calumny that was circulated against us 
for some time back : that we used to tear out the hearts 
and eyes of the poor little Chinese children. AH this 
proceeds from the malice of Satan, who was filled with 
envy at all the good that this mission was achieving, 
and, hence, gathered together all the wickedness of hell, 
in order to impede it. The persecution only fell on the 
Catholics; the Protestants, though there are very many 
of them in that city, did not suffer from it in any way, and 
God did not permit their cause to be mixed up with 
ours. Here, then, is a good number of martyrs. Our 
Holy Father will, I hope, return thanks to God that 
some of his children have attained this crown. How 
I would rejoice to have been one of their number! But 
I was not worthy of so great a favor ; and I was called 
away from that city just at the moment when the per- 
secution burst forth. All the persons connected with our 
two houses were also massacred, and with them a good 
many other Christians ; and the children were carried 
off to a pagan hospice. We have been told that our 
dear Sisters expected this dreadful outburst of persecu- 
tion, and, though they hoped it might be averted, they 
spent the whole morning of that day in preparing for it. 



An Irish Martyr at Tien-Tsin, China. 721 

The missionaries also spent a part of the morning hearing 
the confessions of the Christians. In fine, our hearts are 
broken at this news ; for, though we feel sure that our 
dear Sisters and worthy missionaries are in heaven, — 
and here everybody calls them martyrs, — still this does 
not prevent those that survive them being overwhelmed 
with affliction at that dreadful massacre." 

She then adds the following extract from a letter re- 
ceived from Tien-Tsin : " It is reported here, and all the 
pagans vouch for it as certain, that, at the time of the 
massacre of the Sisters, a Bonzesse (i. e., the wife of one 
of the pagan priests) went to the balcony of her house to 
look on at the bloody scene, and, as each one was mas- 
sacred, she saw a beautiful and brilliant cloud mounting 
to heaven. Struck with this prodigy, she cried out that 
these people must have been beloved by God, and she at 
once proceeded to the court-yard of the Sisters' house. 
The murderers, seeing her, asked what she sought there. 
She replied that they were injuring holy people, and that 
she came to adore the God whom the murdered Sisters 
adored : whereupon they at once struck off her head." 

The Times correspondent, at Shanghai, writing on 
the nth of August, gives some details regarding the 
interment of the remains of these victims of Chinese 
ferocity : — 

" The victims of the Tien-Tsin massacre were buried 
on the 3d inst., in the presence of a large body of native 
and foreign officials, and of nearly all the foreign residents 
of Tien-Tsin. I mentioned, in a previous letter, that the 
site of the burnt consulate and mission-premises had been 
selected for their cemetery. 

" The coffins had all been lowered into the grave on 
the previous day, so that it remained only to perform 
the funeral ceremony, which was impressively conducted 
by Mgr. Thierry, the Pro- Vicar of Chili, aided by two 
other missionary priests. After it had ended, and holy 



722 Martyrs and Confessors. 

water had been sprinkled on the grave, orations were 
delivered by several of the officials present, in relation 
to the event. Count de Rochechouart, his imperial maj- 
esty's char ge'-d affaires, spoke first. History, he said, 
might be searched in vain for events so detestable as the 
massacre of the 21st of June. 

" Seventeen French subjects, of whom twelve were 
women, had been massacred, cut to pieces by a fanatical 
mob, which, not content with killing and destroying, had 
wished to increase the enormity of its crime by the mu- 
tilation of the bodies after death. He could not trust 
himself to relate the horrors which had been committed ; 
but neither could he pass in silence the sublime conduct 
of the Sister-Superioress, who, when the bloodthirsty 
mob had surrounded the building, and was breaking in 
the doors, advanced alone toward them, and offered 
herself and her Sisters as victims to their rage, begging 
that they would spare the Chinese who surrounded and 
had learnt to rely on them. 

" Mgr. Thierry spoke briefly but well, in a tone be- 
coming his profession. The death of the victims had 
been to them a gain: come to China with a hope of 
martyrdom, they had obtained the accomplishment of 
their most sincere wish, and had given their lives for 
Christ." 

That nothing should be wanting to complete the crown 
of the martyred Sister Louise, the enemies of her faith 
at home united with the barbarian murderers of Tien- 
Tsin in seeking to heap obloquy on the memory of such 
heroic victims of charity. The Protestant mission- 
aries and residents of China raised their voice against 
the barbarity of the pagan murderers. Nearer home, 
Protestant merchants held a meeting at the London 
Tavern, to protest " against the horrible outrages per- 
petrated on Christian ladies, engaged in works of mercy." 
But the Orangemen of Ireland are Protestants of quite 



An Irish Martyr at Tien-Tsin, China, 723 

another stamp; and the Mail, in a leading article, writing 
as their official spokesman, could find no other name for 
these heroines of charity but baby-farming nuns ; and 
adds, that at the hands of the Chinese populace they 
received the punishment which they deserved. I need 
not remind the reader that " baby-farming " is a term 
reserved for those wicked wretches in England who^ 
obtain babies from unnatural parents, undertaking to 
rear them for a certain price, and then maliciously and 
murderously drug them to death. And thus that Pro- 
testant organ, almost surpassing the virulence of the 
Tien-Tsin barbarians, would fain compare such a sj^stem 
of assassination with the mission of those heroines ol 
charity, who gratuitously, and at the risk of their own 
lives, would seek to rescue the Chinese infants from the 
certain death to which their heartless pagan parents so 
often expose them. 

In contrast with such ignoble bigotry, we will present 
two Protestant narratives, — the one English, the other 
American, — regarding this dreadful tragedy. The 
Rev. Charles Henry Butcher, M. A., British chaplain at 
Shanghai, writes from that place on July the 6th : " It 
is no exaggeration to say that, since Cawnpore, no such 
deed of blood has been committed. The murder of the 
Sisters of Charity is an outrage, not on a nation or a 
church, but on humanity itself. As chaplain to the 
British community of Shanghai, I have had oppor- 
tunities of seeing the noble and devoted work of some of 
these women, when taking care of the sick at the hos- 
pital at this port, before they removed to the North. One 
lady, who had been murdered with every circumstance 
of horror, was an Irish lady, whose memory is cherished 
with affection and gratitude by many of the community 
here. While the recollection of these things is fresh, it 
is not easy to write with calmness ; but I must venture 
to ask your permission to place prominently before your 



724 Martyrs and Confessors. 

readers three points, which are, in my judgment, the 
most practical and important lessons of the Tien-Tsin 
massacre : — 

" 1. This event disproves one popular fallacy, viz., 
that the Chinese are free from superstition, 
f " We hear repeatedly a broad contrast drawn between 
the calm and comprehensive spirit of the Confucian 
philosophy, and the narrow-minded bigotry of sectarian 
Christians. Now, though there is much that is ad- 
mirable in the writings of Confucius, it is a mistake to 
believe that his system has been able to preserve the 
mass of the people from the most abject and ignorant 
superstition. The credence obtained for the stories 
about eye-gouging, etc., lately circulated against the 
Roman Catholic missionaries, goes far to prove this. 
The people, whom many delight to represent as a school 
of tolerant and placid philosophers, are actually proved 
to be capable of cruelties which bear comparison with 
those of North-American Indians. 

" As an illustration of the fallacy of the popular view, 
I may say that, at the very time when I received the 
news of the savage murder of nine Sisters of Charity, a 
priest and his converts, I was reading an article in the 
Saturday Review, stating that the Pekin government is 
entirely exempt from religious bigotry ! 

" 2. This event blows to pieces any fragments of trust 
in the late Mr. Burlingham and his theories, that may 
yet remain in men's minds. The speeches about the 
Chinese mandarins desiring to see the ' shining cross ' on 
every hill, are now felt to have been fabrications, made 
to serve a particular purpose ; at least, even Chinese 
perversity could scarcely persuade us that men show 
their regard for a faith by burning its churches, and stab- 
bing and disembowelling its priests. The truth is, the 
literati hate missionaries ; the common people hear them 
gladly. 



An Irish Martyr at Tien- 7 sin, China, 725 

" 3. The tragedy in the North shows us that the 
Chinese government is absolutely untrustworthy. His 
excellency, Chung How, knew, three or four days before 
the massacre, that an outrage was intended. He took 
no steps whatever to prevent it ; on the contrary, he con- 
nived at it. The actual perpetrators of these crimes were 
the bravoes of Tien-Tsin ; but it must never be lost sight 
of that the Sisters were murdered in the presence of dis- 
ciplined troops, who protected the native shops from 
pillage, but did not stir a hand to defend the foreigners ; 
i. e., they were present to keep the murderers to their fiend- 
ish work, and to prevent their digressing into any other 
more innocent employment. This event has no parallel 
in the Gordon Riots, or any similar disturbances, when 
a government has been temporarily unable to control the 
mob. That the responsibility rests with the officials, none 
can doubt who read the account, which says distinctly : 
' The whole thing was done by the bravoes of Tien- 
Tsin, the fighting men and bullies, the streets being full 
of troops, who were apparently there simply to keep 
the rowdies from breaking into the shops. The attack 
was made by signal, the same as used at fires ; and 
when the murders were completed, the retreat was 
tom-tommed in the same way as at fires, and the crowd 
dispersed.' 

" It is very important to keep this in mind, as, before 
the assassins could have well washed the blood off their 
hands, an Englishman, in the employ of the Chinese, was 
engaged in writing to a Chinese newspaper an account, 
endeavoring to throw the blame on the French consul 
and the Sisters. No money and cunning will be spared 
to hide the truth; and, therefore, it is the duty of every 
one who is assured, from reliable sources, of the facts, to 
endeavor to give them the widest publicity in Europe and 
America. 

" And now about the future. It is the wish of all fair- 



726 Martyrs and Confessors, 

minded men interested in the China question that 
foreigners may not attempt to atone for a culpable 
remissness by an unreasonable violence. To take blood- 
money, and to procure the judicial slaughter of a number 
of substitutes, while the real criminals escape, will do 
more harm than good. The troops whom we have seen 
so ready to protect the people while they were doing 
evil, should be compelled to protect the foreign missionary 
while he is doing good. 

" This is all the Roman Catholic fathers desire. To 
quote the words of the Shanghai priest's reply to the 
Protestant address of sympathy : — 

" ' No doubt the blood of so many innocent victims, §0 
barbarously shed, must rise up to the altar of the Lamb, 
and cry aloud on our behalf, till it obtains for us the 
sole vengeance we wish for, viz. : the better spread of the 
true light on these people, now living under the shadow 
of death ; the greater freedom for the better exercise of 
works of charity toward the sufferers, and principally 
toward the little ones who were, for our divine Saviour, 
objects of such singular affection.' " 

An American correspondent from Tien-Tsin thus 
writes to a New York journal, on July 23d, 1870: — 

" Notices of the Tien-Tsin massacre have reached you 
already, doubtless ; but you may not be in possession of 
the facts relating to it. Little more will be attempted 
now than to bring before your readers the main features 
of an event so horrible in its details, that no one can think 
of it but with a shudder. 

" For many months rumors were in circulation that 
the Catholics were guilty of taking out the eyes and 
hearts of children, for medicinal purposes, which, though 
false, created much excitement. These rumors increased 
in virulence till they burst forth in an infuriated mob, on 
the 2 1 st of June, causing great destruction of life and 
property : twenty-two foreigners, occupying various 



An Irish Martyr at Tien-Tsin, China. 727 

positions in life, were the victims of one of the most 
brutal massacres which history records. 

" Reliable evidence of a most convincing character had 
been obtained, establishing the following points, viz. : — 

" The plot has been maturing for weeks, if not for 
months, and the time of its consummation has been 
arranged and known for days previous. 

" The plot was known, approved, and aided in execu- 
tion by two, at least, of the leading city officials and 
some of the military officers, one of whom led foreign 
drilled troops to the attack, and encouraged the people 
in the work of destruction and death. More than a 
month has elapsed since the enactment of this fearful 
deed of blood and suffering, and yet no proof can be 
adduced to show that our representative in Pekin has 
attained even an approximately adequate conception of 
the magnitude of the crisis which has overtaken us. The 
only positive information we have is, that the members 
of the United States legation are rusticating ' at the 
hills,' enjoying, in undisturbed tranquillity, the countless 
charms of their summer retreat. Report speaks of them 
as ' calm and grand ' in deportment, and philosophically 
superior to what is occurring about them ; that they 
receive, with a smiling suspicion, all our notices of this 
sad catastrophe, as the fanciful narrations of an excited 
brain. And what wonder, when we remember that their 
official adviser, our consular agent at Tien-Tsin, is an 
alien, whose interests are wholly with the Chinese gov- 
ernment, in whose employ he receives about $5,000 per 
annum ! 

" That the above is not overdrawn, may be gathered 
from the following facts : — 

" The foreign ministers were informed that, for a con- 
siderable period previous to the fatal day, the anti-foreign 
feeling in Tien-Tsin and the surrounding country had 
been deepening and intensifying ; that it had been increas- 



728 



Martyrs and Confessors. 



ingly manifested in the conduct of the official classes ; 
and that, in manifold and specious ways, it was gradually 
permeating all classes of society. The same facts were 
often referred to by those resident in Pekin. The expul- 
sion of the hated foreigner was known to be matter of 
\ common desire and expectation. 

"It was known to them that this general feeling 
throughout China had found expression, during the last 
three or four years, in a series of attacks on foreigners, — 
all emanating from the same sources, aiming at the same 
end, and, in degree, following an ascending scale of gra- 
dation ; and that innocent blood of a preceding year 
remained still unavenged. They w T ere at last informed 
that the climax had been reached in fearful deeds of vio- 
lence and blood. The terrible events of that never-to-be- 
forgotten day were minutely described to them, and of 
the dire results they were fully apprised. They were 
told that a score of foreigners, the most of whom were 
unoffending, delicate women, were horribly murdered in 
broad daylight; that they were subjected to the most 
cruel barbarities that fiendish ingenuity could invent ; 
that, when death had at last ended their sufferings, their 
remains were treated with every possible indignity : 
haggled, cut in pieces, and cast, some into the water, and 
some into the flames. 

" They were told how the corpses were rescued from 
the river at the foreign settlement, hacked, mutilated, 
almost beyond recognition ; such spectacles of ghastly 
horror that the stoutest hearts, in gazing, w r ere terror- 
stricken, and bowed down in grief. They were told that 
when the coffins sent by the mandarins, and said to contain 
the bodies of the Sisters of Charity, were opened, there 
were found only a few ashes and a melancholy collection 
of charred bones. They know that several scores of 
natives, Christians and others, in foreign employ, were 
robbed, beaten, tortured, and not a few murdered, for 



An Irish Martyr at Tien-Tsin, China. 729 

no other crime but that of connection with us. They 
have been informed that many buildings, in more than a 
dozen localities, some of them imposing structures, erected 
at great cost, others the houses of Christian and friendly 
natives, were sacked, torn to pieces, or consigned to the 
flames. 

" They have had ample information of the fact that 
this event was not the result of a sudden outburst of 
popular feeling, but has been a matter of gradual and 
extensive preparation. 

" Some may think this an overdrawn picture, but I 
assert it to be given on credible evidence. It is substan- 
tiated by documents in our possession ; it is borne out 
by competent judges in the capital ; it is proved by 
the demand already made on Tien-Tsin residents to 
prepare estimates of losses sustained, in order to im- 
mediate payment by the Chinese government. And 
all this while the villains who tore down our chapels, 
searched in them for the missionaries, with avowed 
intent to kill them, beat and killed the native Christians, 
cut in pieces foreign officials, and cut off the breasts, 
ran spears through, and ripped open the bodies, of 
innocent and defenceless women, are still running at 
Jarge, vaunting their blood-stained booty, boasting of 
their valor in perpetrating these diabolical deeds of 
crime and shame, and stirring up the people to commit 
further outrages." 

We feel confident that Sister Louise will receive from 
Holy Church, at no distant day, the bright aureola of the 
martyrs of Christ ; but whilst, amidst the white-robed 
army, she followeth the Lamb, and waits this earthly 
tribute to her devoted heroism, we pray her to intercede 
for those who calumniate the saving religion here at home, 
that their eyes may be opened to see the wickedness of 
the course which they pursued, their hearts be led cap- 
tive to truth, and they themselves be brought to share 



73'o Martyrs and Confessors. 

the manifold blessings of God's mercy, as members of 
the one true fold. 

The present invaluable document is a letter addressed 
by the Superioress of the Sisters of Charity, Pekin, to 
the brother of the martyred Sister Louise (O'Sullivan). 
A report was circulated by some newspapers, not too 
friendly to Ireland, that Sister Louise had fled from the 
hospital the morning of the massacre, and thus had been 
deprived of the crown of martydom which was granted 
to the other Sisters of Charity. The present letter of 
the Superioress of the Sisters of Charity is an authorita- 
tive contradiction of that false report : — 

Pekin, June 2\st, 1871. 
" Reverend Sir :— 

" May the grace of our Saviour be with us forever- 
more. Two days ago I received your esteemed letter 
of the 10th of April. I must suppose that you did not 
receive my sorrowful letter of July, 1870. Your silence 
induced me to presume so, and I was grieved; because 
my affection for my good and well-beloved little Sister 
Louise (O'Sullivan) would not permit me to imagine, 
without sincere regret, that her worthy brother should 
be without tidings from the distant country which she has 
sprinkled with her blood. 

" The misfortunes of our poor France have occasioned 
the long delay of my letter. 

"To-day, 21st of June, the anniversary of this sad and 
awful tragedy, is a day well adapted to speak of this 
dear beloved. No, no ; what they have told you is un- 
true. Sister Louise did not abandon her post. Like her 
companions, she suffered herself to be slaughtered as a 
tender lamb. It is said that she was treated with great 
cruelty, but it is difficult to ascertain with accuracy how 
much these dear martyrs suffered. The infuriated popu- 
lace inhumanly butchered them, and this flatters our 



An Irish Martyr at Tien-Tsin^ China, 731 

hope that they had not long to suffer. They were, indeed, 
cut in pieces; and when, after the storm, the English 
consul ordered the remains of our dear victims to be 
gathered up, only some scattered members were discov- 
ered, and these scorched by the fire. 

" The dear remains have been deposited in six coffins, 
and interred in the French consul's enclosure, where a 
monument has been erected to the glory of our martyrs, 
and to the eternal disgrace of the ungrateful country 
which thus suffered them to be slaughtered. 

" The fact which you have heard has occurred, but 
not to your sister. It happened to a French lady, 
Madame Shallemaison, who escaped, and was recaptured 
in the evening, as you are aware. The mother of this 
lady is the only one in the town of Tien-Tsin who en- 
deavored to succor our good Sisters. Her husband was 
among those who fell victims to the fury of the pagans : 
may heaven recompense his charity ! Gratitude renders 
it imperative that I should recommend him to your 
prayers. 

" The bishop ordered that the scene of the massacre 
should be diligently searched ; and in the ruins of the 
house the sacred vases, which had been concealed the 
very morning of the massacre, at the very moment the 
rumor was circulated, have been found. They found, also, 
a small piece of our Sister's habit : we look upon it as a 
relic, and 1 have much pleasure in forwarding you a por- 
tion of it. 

" The sojourn of your sister at Tien-Tsin was so de- 
cidedly marked by Providence, and so much against 
my will, that I see a convincing proof in it that this dear 
Sister obtained the favor of being martyred, that she 
might the better expiate any little infirmities inseparable 
from our poor human nature. But she was so straight- 
forward and good that she could not but be acceptable 
to God. She was so amiable on this earth, how much 



732 Martyrs and Confessors, 

more so must she be in heaven! I have often besought 
her to give me some proof of her happiness. I hope that 
some signal favors will console us in the assurance that 
they are in heaven. 

" For the past year we have had to suffer many anxie- 
ties and troubles, both because of the dangers that have 
menaced ourselves, and of the situation of France. Be 
pleased to assist us by your prayers, while you profit by 
our trials. I also recommend to you our poor and un- 
grateful mission. The bishop is at Tien-Tsin, where he 
is reconstructing the church and the houses which were 
consumed. At his return I shall not fail to execute your 
commands. 

" I have the honor to be, with most profound respect, 
your most humble and obedient servant, 

" Sister Jaurias, 
" Of the Sisters of Charity." 

"Rev. M. O'Sullivan, C. M., 

" St. Vincent de Paul's, Cork, Ireland." 



APPENDIX 



TO 



PARNELL'S HISTORY 



OF THE 



PENAL LAWS, 



NOTE A. 

The following extract is taken from 
" Tracts on the Popery Laws " in the 
ninth volume of Mr. Burke's works, 
which was first published in 1812, 
four years after the first edition of this 
history was published. It is here in- 
serted as being a most conclusive 
corroboration of the opinion given 
in his history upon the Treaty of 
Limerick; and as also being an un- 
answerable refutation of the arguments 
contained in the pamphlets of the late 
Arthur Browne, Esq., and Doctor 
Duigenan: — 

"It will now be seen that, even if 
these Popery laws could be supposed 
agreeable to those of nature in these 
particulars, on another and almost as 
strong a principle they are yet unjust, 
as being contrary to positive compact, 
and the public faith most solemnly 
plighted. On the surrender of Lime- 
rick, and some other Irish garrisons, 
in the war of the revolution, the lords- 



justices of Ireland, and the com- 
mander-in-chief of the king's forces, 
signed a capitulation with the Irish, 
which was afterward ratified by the 
king himself, by Inspeximtcs, under 
the great seal of England. It contains 
some public articles relative to the 
whole body of the Roman Catholics 
in that kingdom, and some with regard 
to the security of the greater part of 
the inhabitants of five counties: what 
the latter were, or in what manner 
they were observed, is at this day of 
much less public concern. The former 
are two, the first and ninth. The 
first is of this tenor : ' The Roman 
Catholics of this kingdom ( Ireland ) 
shall enjoy such privileges, in the ex- 
ercise of their religion, as are consist- 
ent with the laws of Ireland, or as 
they did enjoy in the reign of King 
Charles II ; and their majesties, as 
soon as tljeir affairs will permit them 
to summon a parliament in this king- 
dom, will endeavor to procure the 
said Roman Catholics such further 



734 



Appendix. 



security in that particular as may pre- 
serve them from any disturbance on 
account of their religion.' The ninth 
article is to this effect- 'The oath to 
be administered to such Roman Cath- 
olics as submit to their majesties' 
government shall be the oath afore- 
said, and no other, viz.: the oath of 
allegiance made by act of parliament 
in England, in the first year of their 
majesties, as required by the Second 
of the Articles of Limerick.' Com- 
pare this latter article with the penal 
laws, as they are stated in the second 
chapter, and judge whether they seem 
to be the public acts of the same 
power, and observe whether other 
oaths are tendered to them, and under 
what penalties. 

"Compare the former with the 
same laws, from the beginning to the 
end, and judge whether the Roman 
Caiholics have been preserved, agree- 
ably to the sense of the article, from 
any disturbance upon account of their 
religion ; or, rather, whether on that 
account there is a single right of 
nature, or benefit of society, which 
has not been either totally taken 
away, or considerably impaired. 

" But it is said that the legislature 
was not bound by this article, as it 
has never been ratified in parliament. 
I do admit that it never had that sanc- 
tion, and that the parliament was 
under no obligation to ratify these 
articles by any express act of theirs. 
But still I am at a loss how they came 
to be the less valid, on the principles 
of our constitution, by being with- 
out that sanction. They certainly 
bound the king and his successors. 
The words of the article do this, or 
they do nothing ; and so far as the 
crown had a share in passing those 
acts, the public faith was unquestion- 



ably broken. But the constitution 
will warrant us in going a great deal 
further, and in affirming that a treaty 
executed by the crown, and contra- 
dictory of no preceding law, is full 
as binding on the whole body of the 
nation as if it had twenty times re- 
ceived the sanction of parliament; 
because, the very same constitution 
which has given to the houses of 
parliament their definite authority, 
has also left in the crown the trust 
of making peace, as a consequence, 
and much the best consequence, of 
the prerogative of making war. If 
the peace was ill-made, my Lord Gal- 
way, Coningsby and Porter, who 
signed it, were responsible because 
they were subject to the community. 
But its own contracts are now subject 
to it. It is subject to them, and the 
compact of the king acting constitu- 
tionally was the compact of the 
nation. 

" Observe what monstrous conse- 
quences would result from a contrary 
position. A foreign enemy has en- 
tered, or a strong domestic one has 
arisen in the nation. In such events 
the circumstances may be, and often 
have been, such that a parliament 
cannot sit. This was precisely the 
case in that rebellion of Ireland. It 
will be admitted, also, that their 
power may be so great as to make it 
very prudent to treat with them, in 
order to save effusion of blood; per- 
haps, to save the nation. Now, could 
such a treaty be at all made, if your 
enemies, or rebels, were fully per- 
suaded that, in these times of con- 
fusion, there was no authority in the 
State which could hold out to them 
an inviolable pledge for their future 
security ; but that there lurked in the 
constitution a dormant but irresist- 



Appendix. 



735 



ible power, which would not think 
itself bound by the ordinary subsist- 
ing and contracting authority, but 
might rescind its acts and obligations 
at pleasure ? 

"This would be a doctrine made to 
perpetuate and exasperate war ; and, 
on that principle, it directly impugns 
the laws of nations, which are built 
upon this principle, that war should 
be softened as much as possible, and 
that it should cease as soon as possi- 
ble, between contending parties and 
communities. The king has a power 
to pardon individuals. If the king 
holds out his faith to a robber to 
come in on a promise of pardon of 
ife and estate, and, in all respects, of 
^ full indemnity, shall the parliament 
-*ay that he must, nevertheless, be 
executed; that his estate must be 
■forfeited, or that he shall be abridged 
of any of the privileges which he 
before held as a subject? Nobody 
will affirm it. In such a case, the 
breach of faith would not only be on 
the part of the king who assented 
to such an act, but on the part of the 
parliament who made it. As the king 
represents the whole contracting ca- 
pacity of the nation, so far as -his 
prerogative (unlimited, as I said be- 
fore, by any precedent law) can ex- 
tend, he acts as the national procu- 
rator on all such occasions. What is 
true of one robber or rebel is as true, 
and it is a much more important truth, 
of one hundred thousand. To urge 
this part of the argument further is, I 
fear, not necessary, for two reasons : 
First, that it seems tolerably evident 
in itself; and, next, that there is but 
too much ground to apprehend that 
the actual ratification of parliament 
would, in the then temper of parties, 
have proved but a very slight and 



trivial security. Of this there is a very 
strong example in the history of those 
very articles. For, though the parlia- 
ment omitted, in the reign of King 
William, to ratify the first and most 
general of them, they did actually con- 
firm the second and more limited, — 
that which related to the security of 
the inhabitants of those five counties 
which were in arms when the treaty 
was made."* 

NOTE B. 

Proportion of Catholics to 
Protestants. 

The following statement has been 
made from materials, the result of 
actual enumeration, and contained in 
Mr. Newenham's " View of Ireland," 
published in 1809. 
Catholics to Protestants, in 

the diocese of Ross, 

72,265 to 2,292 - - 31^ to I 
Ditto, in eight parishes of the 

diocese of Cork, houses- 1 1 to I 
Ditto, in the City of Cork, 

numbers - - - 7 to 2 
Ditto, in the parish of Ardagh, 

houses - - - - 70 to 1 
Ditto, in the town of Clonmel, 

houses - - 3 to I 

Ditto, in the parish of Kil- 

larney - - - 35 to I 

Ditto, in the parish of Blarney, 

houses - - - 19 to I 

Ditto, in the parish of Cove, 

houses - - - 20 to I 

Ditto, in eleven parishes of the 

diocese of Tuam, num- 
bers - - - - 54 to I 
Ditto, in the town of Graigna- 

mana, houses - - 100 to I 

Catholics to Protestants in the 

parish of Aries, families 100 to I 



* Burke's \Y< 



>1. ix, p. 37/ 



736 



Appendix. 



Ditto, in the parish of Tul- 
low, the most Protestant 
parish in the diocese of 
Leighlin, - - 12 to I 

No Protestants in the following 
parishes : — 

Kilcummin, St. Mullin's, Allen, 
Kilbegnot, Newport, Abbeyfeale. 

Only eleven Protestant families in 
the following parishes : — * 

Castle Blakeny, Killyglass, Shankill 
and Lusk. 

Catholics to Protestants in 

the county cf Kilkenny t 17 to I 
Ditto, in the counties of Clare, 
Kerry, Limerick, Water- 
ford, Leitrim, Mayo, 
Roscommon, according 
to general opinion - 50 to I 
Ditto, in the counties of Kil- 
dare, Meath, West Meath, 
Galway, Sligo, according 
to general opinion - - 20 to I 
In the counties of Antrim and 
Dunn the two sects are supposed to 
be equal. 

The Catholics are to the Protes- 
tants, according to general opinion, 
in the county of Londonderry, as 
two to one ; in the counties of 
Armagh and Fermanagh, as three to 
one ; in the other counties of Ulster, 
as four and five to one. 

These statements are inserted, not 
for the purpose of drawing an infer- 
ence making the Catholics to bear a 
very high ratio to the Protestants, but 
to show that there can be nothing 
very extravagant, or very far from 
the truth, in assuming as the data 
of the following calculation that, in 
three provinces of Leinster, Munster 

* See Newenham's " View of Ireland," Ap., p. 
xxs viii. 
t 3e* Tighe's Survey. 



and Connaught, the Catholics are to 
the Protestants as twelve to one; and 
that, in the province of Ulster, the 
Catholics are to the Protestants as 
three to two. 

Taking, then, the parliamentary 
returns as the basis of the calculation 
in these proportions, — 
It appears from these, 
that the population of 
the three provinces 
amounts to 4,803,333 
(p. vii,), at twelve 
Catholics to one Pro- 
testant; yf of this num- 
ber are Catholics, viz. : 4,433,84 "* 
It also appears that the 
population of Ulster 
amounts to 1,998,494 
(p. vii), at three Cath- 
olics to two Protes- 
tants ; f of this number 
are Catholics, viz. - 1,199,094 
Thus it appears that the 
total number of Cath- 
olics, out of a popula- 
tion of 6,801,821, is - 5,632,938 
According to the above 
numbers and propor- 
tions, the Protestants 
in three provinces are 
f 3 of 4,803,333, viz. - 369,487 
Ditto, in Ulster, f of 

1,998,494, viz.: - - 799, 396 
Thus it appears that the 
total number of Pro- 
testants, .out of" a 
population of 6,801 - 
821, is - - - 1,168,883 
These gross relative numbers make 
the ratio of Catholics to Protestants 
very nearly indeed as five to one. 

Supposing, then, the number of both 
Catholics and Protestants to have 
gone on increasing in this ratio since 



Appendix. 



737 



1 82 1, the number of Catholics to 
Protestants, out of the present 
population of 7,700,000, will be as 
five to one, and in whole numbers as 
6,416,667, to 1,283,333. 

If the population actually is now 
at least 8,000,000, which abundant 
reason exists to show to be the case, 
then the Catholics will be to the Pro- 
testants according to the ratio of five 
to one, in number 6,666,666 to 1,333, 

333- 

The general rule in respect of the 
rate at which the population of a 
country increases, a rule founded upon 
constant and uniform facts, is, that 
"population, when unchecked, goes 
on doubling itself every twenty-five 
years, or increases in a geometrical 
ratio." (Malthus' Essay, vol. I, p. 8.) 

This has taken place for about a 
century and a half, successively, in 
North America; and as the means of 
subsistence in Ireland are more ample, 
the manners of the people more 
pure, and the checks to early marriages 
fewer than in any of the modern states 
of Europe, there exists no reason to 
doubt that the population of Ireland 
is now increasing at the rate of doub- 
ling itself in twenty-five years. 
Although the numbers computed by 
Dr. Beaufort, and those returned by 
the census of 1821, may, so far as 
they are worth anything, show a slower 
rate of increase, the difference may be 
explained, first, by the acknowledged 
fact that the census of 182 1 is ex-, 
ceedingly incorrect; secondly, by 
mentioning another fact, that the 
circumstances of the last fifteen years 
have been much more favorable to 
a rapid increase of population, than 
those were of the preceding fifteen 
years. 



If a comparison could be made of 
the births and burials of the whole 
kingdom, at different periods, it 
would decide the question, for then 
it would be necessary only to adopt 
the rule laid down by Dr. Price (vol. 
ii, p. 51), to find out the actual rate 
of increase. He says: "The rate of 
increase, supposing the procreative 
powers the same, depends upon two 
causes: 'The encouragement to mar- 
riage, and the expectation of a child 
just born.' " When one of these 
is given, the increase will be always 
in proportion to the other ; that is, 
as much greater or less as the ratio 
is of the numbers who reach maturity, 
and of those who marry, to the 
number born, so much quicker or 
slower will be the increase. Let us 
suppose the operation of these causes 
such as to produce an annual excess 
of the births above the burials, equal 
to a thirty-sixth part of the whole 
number of inhabitants. It may seem 
to follow from hence that the in- 
habitants would double their own 
number in thirty- six years, and thus 
some have calculated. But the truth 
is, that they would double their own 
number in much less time. 

Every addition to the number of 
inhabitants from the births produces 
a proportionably greater number of 
births, and a greater excess of these 
above the burials; and, if we suppose 
the excess to increase annually at the 
same rate with the inhabitants, or so 
as to preserve the ratio of it to the 
number of inhabitants always the 
same, the period of doubling will be 
twenty-five years.* 

* For the formula of making the calculation, sec 
note, yoI, ii, p. 52, of Dr. Price on " Annuities." 



738 



Appendix. 



NOTE C. 

["The Principles of Roman Cath- 
olics," from the prayer-book which is 
in general use amongst the Catholics 
of Ireland, and which was published 
by Dr. Coppinger, Titular Bishop of 
Cloyne.] 

Section I. 
I. The fruition of God and the re- 
mission of sin are not attainable by 
man, otherwise than in and by the 
merits of Jesus Christ, who gratui- 
tously purchased them for us. 

2. These merits of Christ are not 
applied to us, otherwise than by a 
right faith in Him. 

3. This faith is but one, entire 
and conformable to its object, which 
is divine revelation, and to which 
faith gives an undoubting assent. 

4. This revelation contains many 
mysteries transcending the natural 
reach of human understanding: where- 
fore, 

5. It becomes the Divine wisdom 
and goodness to provide some way or 
means whereby man might arrive at 
the knowledge of these mysteries, — 
means visible and apparent to all ; 
means proportioned to the capacities 
of all ; means sure and certain to all. 

6. This way or means is not the 
reading of the Scripture, interpreted 
according to the private reason or 
judgment of each particular person or 
nation ; but, 

7. It is an attention and submission 
to the voice of the Catholic, or Univer- 
sal, Church, established by Christ for 
the instruction of all, spread for that 
end through all nations, and visibly 
continued in the succession of pastors 
and people through all ages. From 
this Church, guided in truth, and 



secured from error in matters of faith, 
by the promised assistance of the 
Holy Ghost, every one may learn the 
right sense of the Scriptures, and 
such Christian mysteries and duties 
as are necessary to salvation. 

8. This Church, thus established, 
thus spread, thus continued, thus 
guided in one uniform faith and sub- 
ordination of government, is that which 
is termed the Roman Catholic Church, 
the qualities just mentioned, unity, 
indeficiency, visibility, succession, and 
universality, being evidently applica- 
ble to her. 

9. It is from the testimony and 
authority of this Church that we re- 
ceive the Scriptures, and believe them 
to be the word of God; and as she 
can assuredly tell us what particular 
book is the word of God, so can she, 
with the like assurance, tell us also 
the true sense and meaning of it 
in controverted points of faith : the 
same Spirit that wrote the Scriptures, 
directs her to understand both them 
and all matters necessary to salva- 
tion. From these grounds it follows, 

10. Only truths revealed byAlmighty 
God, and proposed by the Church to 
be believed as such, are and ought 
to be esteemed articles of Catholic 
faith. 

11. As an obstinate separation from 
the unity of the Church in known mat- 
ters of faith is heresy, so a wilful 
separation from the visible unity of the 
same Church in matters of subordina- 
tion and government is schism. 

12. The Church proposes unto 
us matters of faith, first and chiefly 
by the Holy Scripture, in points 
plain ar.d intelligible in it; secondly, 
by definitions of General Councils, in 
points not sufficiently plain in Scrip- 



Appendix. 



739 



ture; thirdly, by apostolical traditions 
derived from Christ and His apostles 
to all succeeding ages. 

Section II. 
I. The pastors of the Church, who 
are the body representative, either dis- 
persed, or convened in council, have 
received no commission from Christ 
to frame new articles of faith, these 
being solely divine revelation, but 
only to explain and to ascertain to 
us what anciently was and is received 
and retained as of faith in the Church, 
when debates and controversies arise 
about them. These definitions in mat- 
ters of faith only, and proposed as 
such, oblige all the faithful to an 
interior assent ; but, 

2. It is no article of faith that the 
Church cannot err either in matters 
of fact, or in matters of speculation 
or civil policy, depending on mere 
human reason, these not being divine 
revelations deposited in the Catholic 
Church; hence is reduced, 

3. If a General Council, much less 
a Papal Consistory, should presume 
to depose a king, and to absolve his 
subjects from their allegiance, no 
Catholic could be bound to submit to 
such a decree ; hence it follows that, 

4. The subjects of the King of 
England lawfully may, without the 
least breach of any Catholic principle, 
renounce, upon oath, the teaching or 
practising the doctrine of deposing 
kings excommunicated for heresy, 
Vy any authority whatsoever, as re- 
pugnant to the fundamental laws of 
the nation, as injurious to sovereign 
power, and as destructive to peace 
and government. 

5. Catholics believe that the Bishop 
of Rome, successor to St. Peter, is 



at the head of the whole Catholic 
Church, in which sense this Church 
may, therefore, be styled Roman Cath- 
olic, because an universal body under 
one visible head ; nevertheless, 

6. It is no matter of faith to 
believe that the Pope is in himself 
infallible, separated from the Church, 
even in expounding the faith ; by 
consequence, Papal definitions or de- 
crees, taken exclusively from a General 
Council, or universal acceptance of the 
Church, oblige none, under the pain 
of heresy, to an interior assent. 

7. Nor do Catholics, as Catholics, 
believe that the Pope has any direct 
or indirect authority over the temporal 
power and jurisdiction of princes. 
Hence, if the Pope should pretend 
to absolve or dispense with his 
majesty's subjects from their allegi- 
ance, on account of heresy or schism, 
such dispensation would be vain 
and null; and all Catholic subjects, 
notwithstanding such dispensation or 
absolution, would be still bound in 
conscience to defend their king and 
country, at the hazard of their lives 
and fortunes (as far as Protestants 
would be bound), even against the 
Pope himself, should he invade the 
nation. 

8. As for the problematical dis- 
putes or errors of particular divines, 
in this or any other matter whatso- 
ever, we are in no wise responsible 
for them; nor are Catholics, as such, 
justly punishable on their account; 
but, 

9. As for the king-killing doctrine, 
or murder of princes excommunicated 
for heresy, it is universally admitted 
in the Catholic Church, and expressly 
so declared, in the Council of Con- 
stance, that such doctrine is impious 



740 



Appendix. 



and execrable, being contrary to the 
known laws of God and nature. 

io. Personal misdemeanors, of what 
nature soever, ought not to be imputed 
to the body of Catholics, when not 
justifiable by the tenets of their faith 
. and doctrine ; for which reason, though 
the stories of the Irish cruelties or 
powder-plot had been exactly true 
(which yet, for the most part, are 
notoriously misrelated), nevertheless 
Catholics, as such, ought not to suffer 
for such offences any more than the 
eleven apostles ought to have suffered 
for the treachery of Judas. 

11. It is a fundamental truth in 
our religion that no power on earth 
can license men to lie, to forswear 
or perjure themselves, to massacre 
their neighbors, to destroy their 
native country, on pretence of pro- 
moting the Catholic cause or religion. 
Furthermore, all pardons or dispensa- 
tions granted, or pretended to be 
granted, in order to accomplish any 
such ends or designs, could have 
no other validity or effect than to 
add sacrilege and blasphemy to the 
above-mentioned crimes. 

12. The doctrine of equivocation, 
or mental reservation, however wrong- 
fully imputed to the Catholic relig- 
ion, was never taught or approved 
by the Church as any part of her 
belief; on the contrary, simplicity and 
godly sincerity are constantly in- 
culcated by her as truly Christian 
virtues, necessary to the conservation 
of justice, truth, and common security. 

Section III. 

I. Every Catholic believes that 

when a sinner repents of his sins 

from the bottom of his heart, and 

acknowledges his transgressions' to 



God and His ministers, the dispensers 
of the mysteries of Christ, resolving 
to turn from his evil ways, and bring 
forth fruits worthy of repentance, 
there is then, and not otherwise, any 
authority left by Christ to absolve 
such a penitent sinner from his sins, 
which authority Christ gave to His 
apostles and their successors, the 
bishops and priests of His Church, in 
these words, when He said : " Receive 
ye the Holy Ghost ; whose sins you 
shall forgive, they are forgiven unto 
them." 

2. Though no creature whatsoever 
can make condign satisfaction, either' 
for the guilt of sin or the pain 
eternal due to it, this satisfaction 
being proper to Christ our Saviour 
only, yet penitent sinners, redeemed 
by Christ, may, as members of Christ, 
in some measure satisfy by prayer, 
fasting, almsdeeds, and other works 
of piety, for temporal pain, which, in 
the order of Divine justice, sometimes 
remains due, after the guilt of sin 
and pain eternal have been remitted. 
Such penitential works are, notwith- 
standing, not otherwise satisfactory 
than as joined and applied to that 
satisfaction which Jesus made upon 
the cross, and in virtue of which all our 
good works find a grateful acceptance 
in the sight of God. 

3. The guilt of sin, or pain eternal 
due to it, is never remitted by what 
Catholics call indulgences, but only 
such temporal punishments as remain 
due after the guilt is remitted, those 
indulgences being nothing else than 
a mitigation or relaxation of canonical 
penances enjoined by the pastors 
of the Church on penitent sinners, 
according to their several degrees of 
demerit : and if abuses and mistakes 



Appendix. 



741 



have been sometimes committed, 
either in point of granting or gaining 
indulgences, through the remissness 
or ignorance of particular persons, 
contrary to the ancient customs and 
discipline of the Church, such abuses 
or mistakes cannot reasonably be 
charged on the Church, or rendered 
matters of derision, in prejudice to 
her faith and discipline. 

4. Catholics hold there is a purga- 
tory, that is to say, a place or state 
where souls departing this life, with 
remission of their sins as to the eternal 
guilt or pain, but yet obnoxious to 
some temporal punishment still re- 
maining due, or not perfectly freed 
from the blemish of some defects or 
deordinations, are purged before their 
admittance into heaven, where nothing 
that is defiled can enter. 

5. Catholics also hold that such 
souls so detained in purgatory, being 
the living members of Jesus Christ, 
are relieved by the prayers and suf- 
frages of their fellow-members here on 
earth ; but where this place is, or of 
what nature or quality the pains are, 
how long souls may be there detained, 
in what manner the suffrages made in 
their behalf applied, whether by way 
of satisfaction or intercession, etc., are 
questions superfluous and imperti- 
nent as to faith. 

6. No man, though just, can merit 
either an increase of sanctity in this 
life, or eternal glory in the next, 
independently of the merits and pas- 
sion of Christ Jesus ; but the good 
works of a just man, proceeding from 
grace and charity, are so far accept- 
able to God as to be, through His 
goodness and sacred promises, truly 
meritorious of eternal life. 

7. It is an article of the Catholic 



I faith that, in the most holy sacrament 
of the Eucharist, there is truly and 
really contained the body of Christ, 
which was delivered for us, and His 
blood, which was shed for the remis- 
sion of sins; the substance of bread 
and wine being, by the power of 
Christ, changed into the substance 
of His blessed body and blood, the 
species or appearances of bread and 
wine still remaining; but, 

8. Christ is not present in this 
sacrament according to His natural 
way of existence, that is, with exten- 
sion of parts, etc., but in a super- 
natural manner, one and the same in 
many places; His presence, therefore, 
is real and substantial, but sacra- 
mental, not exposed to the external 
senses, or obnoxious to corporal con- 
tingencies. 

9. Neither is the body of Christ in 
this holy sacrament separated from 
His blood, or His blood from His body, 
or either of them disunited from His 
soul and divinity, but all and whole 
living Jesus is entirely contained un- 
der each species ; so that whosoever 
receives under one kind is truly par- 
taker of the whole sacrament, and no- 
wise deprived either of the body or 
blood of Christ. True it is, 

10. Our Saviour Jesus Christ left 
unto us His body and blood under two 
distinct species or kinds, in the aoing 
of which, He instituted not only a 
sacrament, but also a sacrifice, — a com- 
memorative sacrifice distinctly show- 
ing His death and bloody passion 
until He come; for, as the sacrifice of 
the cross was performed by a distinct 
effusion of blood, so is that sacrifice 
commemorated in that of the altar 
by a distinction of the symbols. Jesus, 
therefore, is here given not only to us, 



742 



Appendix. 



but for us, and the Church is thereby 
enriched with a true, proper and pro- 
pitiatory sacrifice, usually termed the 
Mass. 

II. Catholics renounce all divine 
worship and adoration of images or 
pictures. God alone we worship and 
adore; nevertheless, we place pictures 
in churches, to reduce our wandering 
thoughts, and enliven our memories 
toward heavenly things. Further, 
we allow a certain honor to be 
shown to the images of Christ and 
His saints beyond what is due to 
every profane figui-e ; not that we 
believe any divinity or virtue to reside 
in them, for which they ought to be 
honored, but because the honor 
given to pictures is referred to the 
prototype or thing represented. In 
like manner, 

12. There is a kind of honor and 
respect due to the Bible, to the cross, 
to the name of Jesus, to churches, to 
the sacraments, etc., as things peculi- 
arly appertaining to God ; also to the 
glorious saints in heaven, as the 
friends of God ; and to kings, magis- 
trates and superiors on earth, to 
whom honor is due, honor may be 
given, without any derogation to the 



majesty of God, or that divine wor- 
ship which is appropriate to Him. 
Moreover, 

13. Catholics believe that the blessed 
saints in heaven, replenished with 
charity, pray for us, their fellow-mem- 
bers here on earth; that they rejoice 
at our conversion ; that, seeing God, 
they see and know Him in all things 
suitable to their happy state. But God 
may be inclined to hear their requests 
made in our behalf, and for their sakes 
may grant us many favors : therefore, 
we believe it is good and profitable 
to desire their intercession, and that 
this manner of invocation is no more 
injurious to Christ, our Mediator, 
than it is for one Christian to beg the 
prayers of another in this world. 
Notwithstanding which, Catholics are 
not taught so to rely on the prayers 
of others as to neglect their own duty 
to God : in imploring His divine mercy 
and goodness ; in mortifying the deeds 
of the flesh ; in despising the world ; 
in loving and serving God and their 
neighbor; in following the footsteps 
of Christ our Lord, who is the way, 
the truth, and the life, to whom be 
honor and glory for ever and ever. 
Amen. 







INDEX. 



PACK. 

Archer, Walter 183 

Athy, Rev. 281 

Barnewall, Rev. John 445 

Barnewall, Dame Margery .... 75 
Barnewall, Revs. Edmund and 

George 338 

Barry, Rev. Richard 272 

Barry, Rev. 293 

Bagot, Rev. Gerald 305 

Barron, Godfrey 463 

Bathe, Rev. John 281 

Birmingham, Dame Eleanor. . . 112 

Birmingham, Rev. Thomas 335 

Begs, Rev. Roger 331 

Black, Rev. Dominick, or Dona- 

tus 292 

Blake, Rev. Nicholas 441 

Boyton, Rev. William 272 

Brady, Right Rev. Bishop Rich- 
ard 165 

Brien, Rev. 293 

Broder, (or O'Broder), Rev. An- 
tony 315 

Bruodin, Rev. Dermitius 219 

Burke, Most Rev. Archbishop 

John 334 

Burke, Rev. Thomas 343 

Butler, Edward 464 

Cana, Rev. Edmund 277 

Canavan, Rev. Patrick 72 

Coghlin, Rev. Oge . - 215 

Caghwell, Rev. Henry 260 

Carighy, Rev. Thaddseus 312 

Carolan, Rev. John 331 

Carighy, Rev. Hugh 321 



PAGE. 

Cheevers, Rev. Edward 72 

Clancy, Rev. John 263 

Clanchy, Rev. Daniel 313 

Cluaine, Rev. Philip 215 

Cluinne, Rev. MacGhiolla 340 

Collins, Rev. Dominick , .. 1 78 

Costello, Rev. Peter 269 

Costello, Rev. Peter 281 

Collins, Rev. John 293 

Connery, Daniel 324 

Connery, Rev. Daniel 340 

Conry, Rev. Hilary 316 

Corny, Rev. Brien 343 

Commin, Rev. Roger 343 

Conry, Rev. McLeighlin 343 

Comins, Rev. Bernard 343 

Connor, Rev. Bernard 333 

Cornelius, Brother 224 

Courcy, Rev. Thomas 51 

Creagh, Most Rev. Archbishop 

Richard 116 

Creagh, Right Rev. Bishop Peter 427 

Creidegain, Rev. Daniel 336 

Crossan, Rev. Charles 216 

Cnegan, Rev. Daniel 336 

Crone, Rev. Eugene. 64 

Cushin, Rev. Paul 339 

Davock, Rev. Gerald 340 

Daly, Rev. Thaddaeus 41 

Dant, Rev. Bonaventure 343 

Daly, Rev. Eugene 267 

De Burgo, Most Rev. Arch- 
bishop John 334 

De Burgo, Right Rev. John.... 369 

De Burgo, Sir John 186 

De Burgo, Rev. Edmund 225 



744 



Index. 



PAGE. 

De Burgo, Lady Honoria 328 

De Burgo, Right Rev. Bishop 

Dominick 381 

De Burgo, Rev. Bonaventure.. 319 

De Burg, Theobald 462 

Delamar, Rev. Edward 343 

Deir, Rev. Thomas 314 

Dillon, Rev. John 343 

Dillon, Rev. Dominick 281 

Dillon, Rev. Vincent Gerald... 309 

Donnelly, Rev. Edmund 69 

Dillon, Rev. Gerald 269 

Donald, Rev. Thaddeus 66 

Donatus, (or Donagh) Rev. 

William 219 

Donatus, Rev. Edmund 69 

Donnellan, Rev. Roger.. 74 

Dogherty, Rev. Cornelius 159 

Donlevins, (or Ultan,) Rev. 

Christopher 268 

Donovan, Rev. Timothy 343 

Duin, Rev. Edmund 340 

Dowdall, James, (two of the 

name) 223 

Egan, Rev. Cormac 266 

Egan, Right Rev. Bishop Boetius 289 

English, Rev. Nicholas 451 

Eustace, Rev. Maurice 158 

Fallen, Rev. James 317 

Farrell, Rev. William 343 

Ferrall, Rev. Walfrid 159 

Fahy, Rev. Edmund 341 

Fernan, Rev. Walter 160 

Finaghty, Rev. James 340 

Fitzgibbon, Most Rev. Arch- 
bishop, (or Gibbon,) 54 

Fitzsimons, Rev. Michael 388 

Fitzsimons, Rev. William 323 

Fitzpatrick, Lady Bridget 323 

Fitzpatrick, Rev. Bernard. 310 

Fitzsymons, Rev. Turlogh 344 

Fleming, Rev. Walter 440 

Flaverty, Rev. John 338 



PAGE. 

Fleming, Rev. Patrick 660 

Fleming, Rev. 439 

Forstall, Right Rev. Bishop 380 

Fox, Rev. David 280 

French, Rev. Richard 73 

French, Rev. Gregory 441 

Fullam, Rev. James 439 

Furlong, Rev. Peter 442 

Florence, Rev. 645 

Fanning, Dominic 463 

Gauran, (or MacGauran) 

Most Rev. Archbishop 162 

Gavan, Rev. Terlagh 343 

Geoghegan, Rev. Arthur 141 

Geraldine, Rev. Gerald 280. 

Geraldine, Rev. Thomas 218 

Geraldine, Rev. William 304 

Geraldine, Rev. John 304 

Geraldine, Rev. John 45 1 

Geoghegan, Rev. Anthony 343 

Gelosse, Rev. Stephen 290 

Gibbon, (or Fitzgibbon) Most 

Rev. Archbishop 54 

Gibbon, Rev. Gerald 432 

Goran, Rev. Charles 74 

Graves, Rev. John 196 

Gragan, Rev. Bernard 214 

Gragan, Rev. John 301 

Grady, Rev. Thomas 343 

Han ly, Rev. John 66 

Hayes, Patrick 73 

Hagerty, Rev. Donald. 340 

Hegerty, Rev. Patrick 277 

Hely, Right Rev. Bishop Patrick 165 

Helan, Rev. Francis 197 

Heinrecban, Rev. Donatus 74 

Henessy, Rev. William 343 

Higgins, Rev. Peter 256 

Hore, Rev. Edmund 263 

Hovgan, Rev. Denis 343 

Horan, Rev. Francis 343 

Humbert, Rev. Patrick 25 

Hurly, Rev. Connor 343 



Index. 



745 



Jordan, Rev. Fulgentius.. 



14 



Kelly, Rev. John 343 

Kelly, Rev. Dominick 451 

Keilly, Rev. Conner 343 

Keogh, Rev. Raymond 253 

Keogh, Brother Raymond 266 

Keogh, Rev. Raymond 266 

Kennan, Rev. Patrick. . . 74 

Kerolan, Rev. Bernard 183 

Kirwan, Right Rev. Bishop 

Francis 317 

Kilkenny, Rev. Bryan 332 

Kinrechtin, Rev. Maurice 147 

Kinrehan, Rev. Maurice 68 

Knoles, Rev. Anthony 84 

Lacy, Right Rev. Bishop 

Hugh 62 

Lalor, Rev. Robert 185 

Latin, Rev. James 262 

Layhode, Rev. Henry 74 

Lamport, Rev. Matthew 73 

Lee, Rev. 293 

Leverous, Right Rev. Bishop 

Thomas 44 

Locheran, Rev. Patrick 198 

Locheran, Rev. Nielan 322 

Lune, Rev. John 197 

Lynch, Most Rev. Archbishop 

James 367 

Lynch, Rev. James 287 

Lynch, Rev. William 308 

Lynze, Rev. Dominick 383 

Lynch, Rev. Michael 451 

Macanaspie, Rev. Terenxe.. 193 

MacCongail, Rev. Roger 32 

MacCuil, Rev. Charles 52 

MacCarthy, Rev. Conor 32 

MacDonel, Rev. Daniel 439 

MacEgan, Rev. Eugene 178 

MacEgan, Rev. Dominick 439 

MacGeoghegan, Rev. Arthur . . 226 

MacGrollen. Rev. James 215 

MacGoilly, Rev. Hugh 330 



PAGE. 

MacGhiolla Cluinne, Rev. Ber- 
nard 340 

MacGeown, Rev. Hugh. 344 

MacKernan, Rev. Thomas 344 

Mackeon, Rev. Hugh 312 

Macnamara, Rev. Roger 313 

MacSorley, Sir Alexander 217 

MacGauran, Most Rev. Arch- 
bishop Edward 162 

MacGuire, Cornelius 461 

MacMahon, Hugh 461 

Magrath, Rev. Miler 292 

Mageunis, Right Rev. Bishop 

Arthur 310 

Magaen, Honoria 328 

Maglainn, Rev. John 441 

Maguire, Rev. Antony 445 

Man us, O'Fidy 215 

Mannin, Rev. Timothy 343 

Matthews, Rev. Francis 269 

Maurice, Rev. 160 

Mede, William 216 

Meyler, Robert 72 

Meyler, Peter 159 

Miller, Rev. Peter 159 

Mollony, Daniel 324 

Moran, Rev. James 292 

Moriarty, Rev. Bernard 165 

Moriarty, Rev. Thaddasus 325 

Moore, Rev. Raymund 346 

Morrogh, John 440 

Moore, Rev. Laurence 63 

Morison, Rev. M 328 

Mulcahy, Rev. Nicholas 292 

Mulroney, Rev. Dermod 40 

Neagren, Rev. Dominick 271 

Nelan, Rev. Denis 311 

Nerihing, Rev. Jeremias 313 

Netterville, Rev. Robert 281 

Netterville, Rev. Christopher.. 331 

Nolan, Rev. Thomas 451 

Nugent, Rev. Richard 287 

Nugent, Rev. Nicholas 339 

O 'Boyle. Rev. Nigel 184 



; 4 6 



Index. 



O'Boyle, Rev. Glaby 38 

O'Brien, Right Rev. Bishop 

Terence Albert 293 

O'Brien, Rev. Donatus 309 

O'Brien, Right Rev. Bishop 

Murtagh 116 

O'Brien, Rev. Cornelius 261 

O'Bern, Rev. Edmund 325 

O'Brien, James . 462 

O'Brien, Bernard 462 

O'Brien, Daniel 462 

O'Coyn, Rev. Matthew 232 

O'Connel, Rev. Thaddseus 270 

O'Conor, Rev. "William 308 

O'Conor, Rev. Cornelius 267 

O'Connor, John 464 

O'Conor, Rev. Patrick 270 

O'Conor, Thaddoeus 462 

O'Cuillin, Rev. John 325 

O'Col gan, Rev. Clement 441 

O'Cahill, Rev. ^Eneas Ambrose 308 

O'Cuiffe, Rev. Arthur 293 

O'Clary, Rev. Michael 304 

O'Caholy, (or O'Cahosi) 304 

O'Charnel, Rev. Bernard 184 

O'Cahan, Rev. Eugene 320 

O'Dunne, Rev. Thaddaaus 341 

O'Dovany, Right Rev. Bishop 

Cornelius 198 

O'Duillian, Rev. Daniel 38 

O'Dowd, Rev. — 43 

O'Dovvd, Charles 462 

O'Dyry, Rev. Patrick 225 

O'Ferrall, Rev. Laurence 306 

O'Ferrall, Rev. Christopher. .. 345 

O'Ferrall, Rev. Laurence. . ... 442 

O'Ferrall, Rev. Bernard....... 306 

O'Ferrall, Rev. Anthony 320 

O'Flaherty, Rev. John 134 

O'Feus, Rev. Philip 74 

O'Faelain, (or Fullam) Rev. 

James 439 

O'Gallagher, Right Rev. Bishop 

Redmond 183 

O'Galleher, Rev. Eugene 184 



PAGE. 

O'Gabhun, Rev. Cormac 215 

O'Gowan, Rev. Turlogh 344 

O'Hanlon, Rev. Roger 74 

O'Higgins, Very Rev. Peter. . . . 257 

O'Higgins, Rev. Thomas 308 

O'Higgins, Daniel 464 

O'Herlahy, Right Rev. Bishop 

Thomas 56 

O'Hurley.Most Rev. Archbishop 

Dermod 81 

O'Hara, Rev. Felix 74 

O'Hara, Rev. Phelim 54 

O'Hely, Right Rev. Bishop 

Patrick 51 

O'Hart, Rev. John 345 

O'Hanrichan, Rev. Daniel 68 

O'Honan, Rev. John 224 

O'Kahan, Sirs Roderick and 

Godfrey 217 

O'Kieran, Conor 218 

O'Kleryn, Rev. Michael 242 

O' Kelly, Rev. John. . . 1 76 

O'Keliy, Rev. Malachy 146 

O'Kelly, Rev. Bernard 326 

O'Kennedy, John 463 

O'Kenedy, Rev. Donatus 314 

O'Kennedy, James 463 

Oluin, Rev. William 186 

Oluin, Rev. Donatus 186 

Olabertag, Rev. Lewis 217 

Oluin, (or O'Laighin) Rev. 

John 272 

O'Laighlin, Rev. John 340 

O'Lochran, Rev. John 55 

O'Murry, Rev. Patrick 44 

O'Mannin, Rev. John 252 

O'Melkeran, Rev. Hugh 64 

O'Moelchory, Rev. Florence... 645 
O'Mollony, Right Rev. Bishop 

Malachy 1 76 

O'Mollony, Donatus 1 74 

O'Mahony, Rev. Francis 263 

O'Maly, Rev. Romandus 314 

O'Meran, Rev. Thaddseus 74 

O'Molloy, Rev. John 159 



Index, 



747 



PAGE. 

O'Neill, Sirs Bernard and 

Arthur 217 

O'Nielan, Rev. Daniel 67 

O'Neaghton, Rev. Dominick. .. 271 

O'Neill, Felix 462 

O'NeilJ, Henry 458 

O'Queely, Most Rev. Arch- 
bishop Malachy 270 

O'Quillenan, Rev. Gelasius 64 

O'Reilly, Rev. James 284 

O'Reilly, Rev. James 338 

O'Reilly, Most Rev. Arch- 
bishop Edmund 347 

O'Reilly, Most Rev. Arch- 
bishop Hugh 252 

O'Riedy, Rev. Donatus 75 

O'Rorke, Rev. Cornelius 51 

O'Rorke, Rev. Donat 55 

O'Ruairk, Constantine 462 

Ormily, Rev. Roger 321 

O'Shea, Rev. Philip 68 

O'Scallan, Rev. Maurice 74 

O'Sullivan, Sister Louise 716 

O'Teman, Rev. Eugene 314 

O'Truory, Rev. Bernard 184 

Ovedon, Rev. Richard 292 

Oveton, Rev. Richard 281 

Panti, Rev. Arthur 345 

Penny, Rev. iEneas 74 

Petit, Rev. Stephen 309 

Pettit, Rev. Stephen 266 

Philbin, Rev. Thomas 306 

Pilan, Rev. John .' 74 

Power, Rev. George 165 

Power, Right Rev. Bishop 

Peter 156 

Plunket, Right Rev. Bishop 

Patrick 366 

Plunket, Most Rev. Archbishop 

Peter 366 

Plunket, Most Rev. Archbishop 

Oliver 384 

Prendergast, Rev. Maurice. . . . 341 

Purcell, Patrick 463 



PAGE. 

Read, Mrs. Alison 267 

Roche, Lady 323 

Roche, Rev. David 293 

Roche, Rev. David 336 

Roche, Rev. Redmond 343 

Roche, Christopher 160 

Rooth, Right Rev. Bishop 

David 288 

Roony, Rev. Thomas. . 343 

Russell, Most Rev. Archbishop 

Patri ck 433 

Russell, Rev. John 343 

Scanlan, Rev. Maurice 68 

Scanlan, Rev. Connor 343 

Screnan, Rev. Donatus 314 

Sheehy, Rev. Nicholas 620 

Shiel, Rev. William 331 

Slevin, Rev. James 343 

Slingsby, Francis 227 

Simmons, Rev. Edmund 55 

Skerrett, Most Rev. Archbishop 

Nicholas 75 

Stapleton, Rev. Theobald 272 

Stafford, Rev. Raymond 285 

Stritch, Thomas 463 

Stephens, Rev. John 160 

Stewart, Rev. John 277 

Sulivan, Rev. Francis. 315 

Talbot, Most Rev. Arch- 
bishop Peter 371 

Tanner, Right Rev. Bishop 

Edmund 54 

Tobin, Rev. , 331 

Trevor, Rev. Patrick 343 

Tinte, Revs. Richard and Thomas 338 

Tully, Rev. Miles 343 

Tally, Rev. Thomas 314 

Tynzbi, Rev. William 344 

Ultan, (or Donlevins) Rev. 

Christopher 268 



748 



Index. 



TAGS. 

Wadding, Rev. Luke 712 

Walsh, Right Rev. Bishop 

William 25 

Walsh, Rev. Philip 343 

Walsh, Rev. John 165 

Wallis, Rev. John 75 

Ward, Rev. Hugh 688 

Ward, Rev. Fergal 32 

Ward, Rev. Fergal 42 



PAOTB. 

Ward, Rev. Fergal 261 

White, Rev. Henry 271 

White, Patrick 305 

White, Francis 305 

Wolf, Rev. James 293 

Wolf, Rev. David 32 

Young, Rev. Nicholas 222 



INDEX OF PLACES. 



Abbeyleix, 159. 

Adare, Convent of, 268. 

Antrim, 588, 600. 

Aries, 677. 

Armagh, 657. 

Armagh, Convent of, 32, 42, 3 12, 322. 

Arran, Isles of, 341. 

Askeaton, Convent of, 53, 224. 

Asseroe, Convent of, 184. 

Athboy, 223. 

Athenry, Convent of, 292, 309, 325, 

342, 442. 
Athlone, 312, 469. 
Aughrim, 470, 494. 

Ballymohun, 70. 
Ballynacargy, 271. 
Ballysheehan, 644. 
Baltimore, Fort of, 66. 
Baltrasna, 338. 
Bandon, 529. 
Bantry, Convent of, 66. 
Beerhaven, 180. 
Bel-atha-Lagain, 660. 
Belfast, 468, 549, 560. 
Belgium, 457, 659. 
Bobbio, 661. 
Boyle, Monastery of, 64. 
Boyne, 469, 494. 
Brentire, 321. 
Brunswick, House of, 615. 
Brie, Monastery of, 677. 
Brittas, 187. 



Brussels, 676. 

Brussels, 710. 

Bunargy, Convent of, 280. 

Burishool, Convent of, 225, 329. 

Bury, 676. 

Carrick, 529. 

Carrickfergus, 339. 

Cashel, 272. 

Cashel, Cathedral of, 675. 

Castle Hackett, 339. 

Chester, 165. 

China, 716. 

Clairvaux, Monastery of, 692. 

Clanricarde, 456. 

Clare, 313, 369. 

Clogheen, 620. 

Clonmel, 529, 629, 717. 

Clonmel, Convent of, 53, 68, 148, 160, 

284, 292, 308, 338. 
Cluantuibh, 650. 
Coimbra, University of, 
Coleraine, Convent of, 338. 
College of H. and U. T. of Q. Eliz., 

519- 
Cologne, 6yy. 
Connaught, 454, 455, 459, 460, 462, 

605. 
Connor, 673. 
Coolrah, 75. 
Cork, 69, 181, 216, 263, 269, 308, 323, 

343. 440. 
Cortown, 450. 
Cumberland, 676. 



750 



Index of Places. 



Deny, Monastery of, 186, 225, 252, 

272, 340, 441. 
Dingle Bay, 471. 
Donegal, 588. 

Donegal, Convent of. 185, 314, 657. 
Down, 588, 671, 673. 
Down, Convent of, 55. 
Drogheda, 197, 223, 281, 287, 469, 

653» 7 l 7- 

Dublin, 74, 76, 89,112, 115, 116, 121, 
184, 186, 197, 198, 218, 219, 224, 
252, 256, 257, 260, 323, 346, 377, 
386, 439, 451, 453, 460, 462, 464, 
469, 510,545, 593, 603, 623. 

Dublin, Castle of, 

Dublin, Four Courts of, 

Dublin, University of, 583. 

Dundalk, 199, 389, 469. 

Dungannon, 545, 588. 

Dungarvan, 263. 

Dunshaughlin, 267. 

Elphin, 617. 

Elphin, Convent of, 55, 316, 381. 

Enniscorthy, Convent of ; 74. 

Enniskillen, 461. 

Exeter, 223. 

Fosse, Monastery of, 682. 
Fosses, 676. 

Galbally, 40. 

Gallvaise, Aharlagh, Convent of, 40. 

Galway, 159, 317, 320, 334, 441, 444, 

462, 489, 502. 
Golden Fort, 64. 
Guaire, Fortress of, 
Guervia, 708. 

Hebrides, Islands of, 278. 
Holy Cross, Abbey of, 88. 

Ingolstadt, 666, 677. 

Inisbofin, Island of, 334, 341. 

Innis, or Innisheen, Convent of, 219, 

222, 312, 321. 
Inniscattery, Island of, 177. 



Jamaica, 458. 
John's Gate, 463. 

Kells, 287. 

Kerry, 464. 

Kilchree, Convent of, 62. 

Kildalkey, 706. 

Kildare, 600, 603. 

Kilkenny, 183, 288, 290, 503, 623. 

Kilkenny Jail, 640. 

Killatra, 75. 

Killeen, 368. 

Killmallock, 52, 148, 280, 432. 

Kilragty, 311. 

Kinsale, 381, 468. 

Lackagh, 337. 

Laganbridge, 660. 

Leighlin, 338. 

Leinster, 454, 455, 605. 

Liessies, 676. 

Limerick, 116, 193, 220, 293, 298, 31 1, 

324, 463, 464, 469, 471, 489, 620. 
Lislaghtin, Convent of, 68, 74. 
Lisle, 710. 
Llandaff, 618. 
London, 123, 160, 226, 269, 392, 442, 

461. 
London Bridge, 460. 
Londonderry, 322, 588, 600. 
Longford, Convent of, 307, 442. 
Lorragh, 295. 
Lougherew, 384. 
Louvain, 647. 
Lucca, 663. 
Lycoboon, 81. 

Malogne, 6yj. 
Maryborough, 339. 
Mecklenburgh, 677. 
Mohoriack, Village of, 70. 
Monoghan, 588. 
Monoghan, Convent of, 25. 
Mount Beatha, 705. 
Moyne, Convent of, 43. 
Mullinahone, 68. 



Index of Places. 



751 



Mullingar, Convent of, 226, 266. 
Multifarnham, Convent of, 214, 280. 
Munster, 454, 455, 463, 605. 

Naas, 257. 

Nenagh, 462, 463. 

Nenay, or De Maggio, Convent of, 71. 

Newry, Abbey of, 82. 

Orlar, or De Urio, Convent of, 270, 

284, 439. 
Ormonds, 462. 

Pekin, 718. 

Pontoise, 677. 

Poole Hall, Cheshire, 376. 

Portugal, 460. 

Prague, 677. 

Quenhy, or Quinchy, Convent of, 313, 
321. 

Rathbran, Convent of, 330. 

Ra-hconnell, 271. 

Rath-Guaire, 708. 

Ratoath, 287. 

Regensburgh, 674. 

Roscommon, Convent of, 266, 271, 

3 2 5> 326. 
Roscrea, Convent of, 41. 
Ross, 291. 

Ross, Abbey of, 333. 
Rush, 433. 
Russia, 457. 

Salamanca, 688. 
Shandraghan, 644. 
Shannon, 454. 
Shruel, 332. 
Simancas, 648. 
Slane, 86. 
Sligo, 462. 



Spain, 455, 457- 

St. Anthony, Convent of, 64 7, 659. 

St. Gallis, Library of, 682. 

St. Giles, Church of, London, 41 1. 

St. John's Well, 

St. Kevin, Church of, Dublin, 94. 

St. Malo, 77. 

St. Mary's, Convent of, 717. 

S trade, Convent of, 284. 

Templeheny, 644. 

Thurles, St. Mary's, Convent of, 23. 

Tien-Tsing, 718. 

Timoleague, Convent of, 178. 

Tipperary, 454, 620, 622. 

Toledo, 648. 

Tracht, 464. 

Tralee, Convent of, 293, 325. 

Trim, 184, 222, 445. 

Tuam, 650. 

Tubrid, 632. 

Tulsk, 320. 

Tyrone, 588. 

Ulster, 454, 462, 549, 603, 606. 
Urlar, Convent of, in County Mayo, 

437- 
Valladolid, Cathedral of, 648. 
Verdun, 676. 
Vienna, 677. 
Viressenaken, 676. 
Viretin, Island of, 42. 

Wansor, 677. 

Waterford, 305, 341, 712. 

Westmeath, 603. 

Wexford, 159, 197, 285, 6oo ; 607. 

Worcester, 75. 

Wurtsburgh, 677. 

Youghal, 38, 67, 178. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



III 

021 064 257 2 



